chiaroscuro

'ellboy

2008-07-19T07:15:00.000-07:00

I've just finished watching Hellboy 2: the Golden Army. For a superhero movie about a horned half-demon from Hell, it's surprisingly light and funny. It's fantastic.

Guillermo Del Toro's love for the comic and characters really shines through for this one once more. If there's anyone who's able to find that wafer-thin middleground between the rabid "you didn't do it like how it's in my head" fanboys who take the fun out of it and the regular moviegoer, it's Mr. Devil's Backbone himself.

The sequel moves with a much quicker pace than the original. That's not a bad thing; at the end of a long day it's nice not to get bogged down by too much death and carnage. And melodrama. But this is a great film and a fun summer movie.

If I had to complain about anything though, it'd be the relationship between the titular character and his pyrokinetic girlfriend, Liz. Mike Mignola, the creator of the comic has never, ever, EVER delved into Hellboy's romantic, tender side- something that I am 100 percent happy with. Hellboy is a cool, kick-ass character who fights monsters for a living. Who would want to expose the seldom-seen lonely asset of that?

Well I guess it'd be Del Toro. He seems to revel in it; pairing the goat-legged Beast of the Apocolypse with a mortal, fireball-flinging woman and using their relationship to make light of common relationship problems while at it. In the film, those are funny. There's a part where Hellboy becomes flustered and remarks "she's angry about something, but you can't ask her what it is because you're supposed to know!" Good stuff. Something both sexes wonder about. Probably.

But as we learn early on in the film MILD SPOILER ALERT:
Liz is actually pregnant. What? Yeah, it's true. So... when the third film rolls around... what? General disgust and outrageous bigotry from Hellboy's public; that's a given. But I can see diapers and Hellboy looking pained as he's dealing with a little devil just looming on the horizon. The Golden Army was terrific Mr. Del Toro, and so was the Devil's Backbone. And Pan's Labyrinth. And Kronos. The film industry needs more people lile you but... Liz getting pregnant? I don't know. Maybe you've got something cooking away in that little bearded head of yours! Who knows! Not me!

Hellboy is my favourite comic characters of all time. The graphic novels are dark and beautiful and the movies are tremendous fun. I recommend this movie. And the books. It's a fun medium.

Anyway... on to The Dark Knight.

Everything's gotten better since I made that CD.

2008-07-19T07:04:00.000-07:00

I've recently made an all-purpose music CD in Harbin, mostly used for classes here and in my flat. There's nothing on it but classical music- some real killer tunes like the 1812 Overture and the 9th by ol' Ludwig Van, along with a Sarah Brightman song thrown in just because the Chinese are really keen on Celine Dion. I never understood why everyone in the West hated her so much until the Course Consultants would play her 24/7. Jeeziz!

On top of that, when ever people see you listening to classical music they automatically assume you've got good taste. It's great! For me though, that music is what it is- actual music. Everybody likes it; it's beautiful. I've never met someone who's snubbed classical music. That's why I chose classical music for the CD; so no one (in particular the students) would complain.

Stayyyy tuned!

2007-09-06T18:25:00.000-07:00

http://youtube.com/watch?v=sUTT8wdN_VA

There's a link for anyone who's been nice enuf to drop by. It's a great, great thing if you have a wireless router.

Anyway I'll be leaving the country soon, and I'll be bringin' a camera-- so be shur to stay tuned as I try to post pictures of my escapades on here. :)

Ever wonder what the child of Nelly Furtardo, Alex Parks, and all five members of the Bloodhound Gang would look like?

2007-05-12T06:58:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqcu-Dwx834

An extreamly well done mash-up of three hit singles. Enjoy it as much as I did!

Jack and His Comrades!

2007-03-01T13:34:00.000-08:00

Once there was a poor widow, as often there has been, and she had one son. A very scarce summer came, and they didn’t know how they’d live till the new potatoes would be fit for eating. So Jack said to his mother one evening, “Mother, bake my cake, and kill my hen, till I go seek my fortune; and if I meet it, never fear but I’ll soon be back to share it with you.”

So she did as he asked her, and he set out at break of day on his journey. His mother came along with him to the yard gate, and says she, “Jack, which would you rather have, half the cake and half the hen with my blessing, or the whole of ’em with my curse?”

“O musha, mother,” says Jack, “why do you ax me that question? sure you know I wouldn’t have your curse and Damer’s estate along with it.”

“Well, then, Jack,” says she, “here’s the whole lot of ’em with my thousand blessings along with them.” So she stood on the yard fence and blessed him as far as her eyes could see him.

Well, he went along and along till he was tired, and ne’er a farmer’s house he went into wanted a boy. At last his road led by the side of a bog, and there was a poor ass up to his shoulders near a big bunch of grass he was striving to come at.

“Ah, then, Jack asthore,” says he, “help me out or I’ll be drowned.”

“Never say’t twice,” says Jack, and be pitched in big stones and sods into the slob, till the ass got good ground under him.

“Thank you, Jack,” says he, when he was out on the hard road; “I’ll do as much for you another time. Where are you going?”

“Faith, I’m going to seek my fortune till harvest comes in, God bless it!”

“And if you like,” says the ass, “I’ll go along with you; who knows what luck we may have!”

“With all my heart, it’s getting late, let us be jogging.”

Well, they were going through a village, and a whole army of gossoons were hunting a poor dog with a kettle tied to his tail. He ran up to Jack for protection, and the ass let such a roar out of him, that the little thieves took to their heels as if the ould boy was after them.

“More power to you, Jack,” says the dog.

“I’m much obleeged to you: where is the baste and yourself going?”

“We’re going to seek our fortune till harvest comes in.”

“And wouldn’t I be proud to go with you!” says the dog, “and get rid of them ill conducted boys; purshuin’ to ’em.”

“Well, well, throw your tail over your arm, and come along.”

They got outside the town, and sat down under an old wall, and Jack pulled out his bread and meat, and shared with the dog; and the ass made his dinner on a bunch of thistles. While they were eating and chatting, what should come by but a poor half-starved cat, and the moll-row he gave out of him would make your heart ache.

“You look as if you saw the tops of nine houses since breakfast," says Jack; “here’s a bone and something on it.”

“May your child never know a hungry belly!” says Tom; “it’s myself that’s in need of your kindness. May I be so bold as to ask where yez are all going?”

“We’re going to seek our fortune till the harvest comes in, and you may join us if you like.”

“And that I’ll do with a heart and a half,” says the cat, “and thank’ee for asking me."’

Off they set again, and just as the shadows of the trees were three times as long as themselves, they heard a great cackling in a field inside the road, and out over the ditch jumped a fox with a fine black cock in his mouth.

“Oh, you anointed villain!” says the ass, roaring like thunder.

“At him, good dog!” says Jack, and the word wasn’t out of his mouth when Coley was in full sweep after the Red Dog. Reynard dropped his prize like a hot potato, and was off like shot, and the poor cock came back fluttering and trembling to Jack and his comrades.

“O musha, naybours!” says he, “wasn’t it the height o’ luck that threw you in my way! Maybe I won’t remember your kindness if ever I find you in hardship; and where in the world are you all going?”

“We’re going to seek our fortune till the harvest comes in; you may join our party if you like, and sit on Neddy’s crupper when your legs and wings are tired.”

Well, the march began again, and just as the sun was gone down they looked around, and there was neither cabin nor farm house in sight.

“Well, well,” says Jack, “the worse luck now the better another time, and it’s only a summer night after all. We’ll go into the wood, and make our bed on the long grass.”

No sooner said than done. Jack stretched himself on a bunch of dry grass, the ass lay near him, the dog and cat lay in the ass’s warm lap, and the cock went to roost in the next tree.

Well, the soundness of deep sleep was over them all, when the cock took a notion of crowing.

“Bother you, Black Cock!” says the ass: “you disturbed me from as nice a wisp of hay as ever I tasted. What’s the matter?”

“It’s daybreak that’s the matter: don’t you see light yonder?”

“I see a light indeed,” says Jack, “but it’s from a candle it’s coming, and not from the sun. As you’ve roused us we may as well go over, and ask for lodging.”

So they all shook themselves, and went on through grass, and rocks, and briars, till they got down into a hollow, and there was the light coming through the shadow, and along with it came singing, and laughing, and cursing.

“Easy, boys!” says Jack: “walk on your tippy toes till we see what sort of people we have to deal with.”

So they crept near the window, and there they saw six robbers inside, with pistols, and blunderbushes, and cutlashes, sitting at a table, eating roast beef and pork, and drinking mulled beer, and wine, and whisky punch.

“Wasn’t that a fine haul we made at the Lord of Dunlavin’s!” says one ugly-looking thief with his mouth full, “and it’s little we’d get only for the honest porter! here’s his purty health!”

“The porter’s purty health!” cried out every one of them, and Jack bent his finger at his comrades.

“Close your ranks, my men,” says he in a whisper, “and let every one mind the word of command.”

So the ass put his fore-hoofs on the sill of the window, the dog got on the ass’s head, the cat on the dog’s head, and the cock on the cat’s head. Then Jack made a sign, and they all sung out like mad.

“Hee-haw, hee-haw!” roared the ass; “bow-wow!” barked the dog; "meaw-meaw!” cried the cat; “cock-a-doodle-doo!” crowed the cock.

“Level your pistols!” cried Jack, “and make smithereens of ’em. Don’t leave a mother’s son of ’em alive; present, fire!” With that they gave another halloo, and smashed every pane in the window. The robbers were frightened out of their lives. They blew out the candles, threw down the table, and skelped out at the back door as if they were in earnest, and never drew rein till they were in the very heart of the wood.

Jack and his party got into the room, closed the shutters, lighted the candles, and ate and drank till hunger and thirst were gone. Then they lay down to rest;–Jack in the bed, the ass in the stable, the dog on the door-mat, the cat by the fire, and the cock on the perch.

At first the robbers were very glad to find themselves safe in the thick wood, but they soon began to get vexed.

“This damp grass is very different from our warm room,” says one.

“I was obliged to drop a fine pig’s foot,” says another.

“I didn’t get a tayspoonful of my last tumbler,” says another.

“And all the Lord of Dunlavin’s gold and silver that we left behind!” says the last.

“I think I’ll venture back,” says the captain, “and see if we can recover anything.”

“That’s a good boy!” said they all, and away he went.

The lights were all out, and so he groped his way to the fire, and there the cat flew in his face, and tore him with teeth and claws. He let a roar out of him, and made for the room door, to look for a candle inside. He trod on the dog’s tail, and if he did, he got the marks of his teeth in his arms, and legs, and thighs.

“Thousand murders!” cried he; “I wish I was out of this unlucky house.”

When he got to the street door, the cock dropped down upon him with his claws and bill, and what the cat and dog done to him was only a flay-bite to what he got from the cock.

“Oh, tattheration to you all, you unfeeling vagabones!” says he, when he recovered his breath; and he staggered and spun round and round till he reeled into the stable, back foremost, but the ass received him with a kick on the broadest part of his small clothes, and laid him comfortably on the dunghill.

When he came to himself, he scratched his head, and began to think what happened him; and as soon as he found that his legs were able to carry him, he crawled away, dragging one foot after another, till he reached the wood.

“Well, well,” cried them all, when he came within hearing, “any chance of our property?”

“You may say chance,” says he, “and it’s itself is the poor chance all out. Ah, will any of you pull a bed of dry grass for me? All the sticking-plaster in Enniscorthy will be too little for the cuts and bruises I have on me. Ah, if you only knew what I have gone through for you! When I got to the kitchen fire, looking for a sod of lighted turf, what should be there but an old woman carding flax, and you may see the marks she left on my face with the cards. I made to the room door as fast as I could, and who should I stumble over but a cobbler and his seat, and if he did not work at me with his awls and his pinchers you may call me a rogue. Well, I got away from him somehow, but when I was passing through the door, it must be the divel himself that pounced down on me with his claws, and his teeth, that were equal to sixpenny nails, and his wings–ill luck be in his road! Well, at last I reached the stable, and there, by way of salute, I got a pelt from a sledge-hammer that sent me half a mile off. If you don’t believe me, I’ll give you leave to go and judge for yourselves.”

“Oh, my poor captain,” says they, “we believe you to the nines. Catch us, indeed, going within a hen’s race of that unlucky cabin!”

Well, before the sun shook his doublet next morning, Jack and his comrades were up and about. They made a hearty breakfast on what was left the night before, and then they all agreed to set off to the castle of the Lord of Dunlavin, and give him back all his gold and silver. Jack put it all in the two ends of a sack and laid it across Neddy’s back, and all took the road in their hands. Away they went, through bogs, up hills, down dales, and sometimes along the yellow high road, till they came to the hall-door of the Lord of Dunlavin, and who should be there, airing his powdered head, his white stockings, and his red breeches, but the thief of a porter.

He gave a cross look to the visitors, and says he to Jack, “What do you want here, my fine fellow? there isn’t room for you all.”

“We want,” says Jack, “what I’m sure you haven’t to give us–and that is, common civility.”

“Come, be off, you lazy strollers!” says he, “while a cat ’ud be licking her ear, or I’ll let the dogs at you.”

“Would you tell a body,” says the cock that was perched on the ass’s head, “who was it that opened the door for the robbers the other night?”

Ah! maybe the porter’s red face didn’t turn the colour of his frill, and the Lord of Dunlavin and his pretty daughter, that were standing at the parlour window unknownst to the porter, put out their heads.

“I’d be glad, Barney,” says the master, “to hear your answer to the gentleman with the red comb on him.”

“Ah, my lord, don’t believe the rascal; sure I didn’t open the door to the six robbers.”

“And how did you know there were six, you poor innocent?” said the lord.

“Never mind, sir,” says Jack, “all your gold and silver is there in that sack, and I don’t think you will begrudge us our supper and bed after our long march from the wood of Athsalach.”

“Begrudge, indeed! Not one of you will ever see a poor day if I can help it.”

So all were welcomed to their heart’s content, and the ass and the dog and the cock got the best posts in the farmyard, and the cat took possession of the kitchen. The lord took Jack in hands, dressed him from top to toe in broadcloth, and frills as white as snow, and turnpumps, and put a watch in his fob. When they sat down to dinner, the lady of the house said Jack had the air of a born gentleman about him, and the lord said he’d make him his steward. Jack brought his mother, and settled her comfortably near the castle, and all were as happy as you please.

http://www.authorama.com/celtic-fairy-tales-16.html

I am the second son of a king.

2007-02-21T20:26:00.000-08:00

I hope I never stop dreaming.

I have a cat named Oscar, known also as Mr. Kitty around the house whom we all think very highly of. However I dreamt Oscar somehow metamorphised into a large, white rabbit with human-like hands which he was constantly balling into fists, and I knew I had to get him some help. I mean, what self respecting cat would want to be seen as a human-bunny hybrid?

Anyway, it had been raining for days; so much so that the house began to fill up with water and I was wading everywhere ; Oscar had to grip onto railing or float around in a pot. Trying to figure out how to help Oscar, I deduced that if he had transformed into a rabbit, that there had to be some kind of bizzare magic or weird brand of sorcery at work behind the scenes. In my mind I associated magic with royalty (like King Arthur and Merlin I guess) and began searching for a King or a Princess, taking Oscar with me, riding on my shoulder.

So I leave the house and the streets are flooded to; I'm wading, waist deep everywhere. I begin to make my way down the street and I notice a dead body floating near me, and on his back are 11 crickets, all playing musical instruments. I felt as if they weren't being respectful for the dead man, so I asked them to leave, and thay said they would- however, they could only do so if they could move to another host, so I said "take me."

So the crickets move onto me; some rest on my head, some play with Oscar, others fly around my body; all safe from the gently rising water. As I move away from the dead man, something freezing cold grips my wrist- it was indeed the corpse, and with his strength pulled me closer.

I was not frightened though; its the way with dreams. He pulled me closer until I was within range of his other hand, he he used to drag me onder the water near his mouth- but still I wasn't frightened and he whispered "Thank you," and suddenly everything went black. But I could still hear the violins, and feel the pressure of Oscar's body on my left shoulder, so I began to feel around. The water (at the point where I finally get my bearings) was up just below my shoulder, and I noticed an orange light bouncing off the walls.

An old man in a comically small oar boat comes up to drifts towards me. He was wearing a yellow slicker with a black tri-cornered hat, and had a third arm coming out of his back holding a lantern (hence the yellow bouncing light.) I looked up at him and he looked down at me, and he held this for hours, with the crickets playing and the cat meowing and water ever so slowly rising. Eventually his lips parted and immidiately black bile began pouring out of his mouth, and he began to ask me questions. His voice was terrible; it sounded like nightmares. He asked me all kinds of questions with the water rising, none of which I'll repeat here, except one- 'What are you.'

The bile began to pollute the water, spread around just me. I looked directly at him and simply said-

"I am the second son of a king."

Instantly my body exploded into thousands upon thousands of houseflies and swarmed everywhere. I was everywhere. Everywhere...

The sound of my swarm was deafening, there were so many of us. We blotted out the sun and rose above the sea. Looking down, I addressed the world, my statement issuing out of the thousands of tiny mouths I had suddenly acquired---

"I am looking for royalty."

And there he was.

Prince Charles. The big-eared buck-toothed painter himself.

And suddenly I was whole again, with Oscar and the crickets with me, atop a tall skyscraper, facing off Prince Charles. Finally I asked...

"...Where am I?"

And he looked at me as if I wasn't serious, and answered

"Don't you understand?... You're in Heaven."

And then cats were everwhere, all in a green field and playing and being sweet and sleeping and being happy and I sunk my fingers into the earth and turned into a tree and watched over them for all time...

Huh- who needs alchohol when you can sleep and dream?

:\

If I had ten legions of those men...

2007-02-14T17:59:00.000-08:00

Hey- who sais the accordian is lame?

http://www.pistolwimp.com/media/57561/

Thank you all for the Birthday notes!

2007-01-10T07:41:00.000-08:00

You make me feel like this guy ;)

This inner peace stuff is tough on the ol' coconut.

2006-11-27T10:43:00.000-08:00

The past week was very odd and now its Monday again. I go jogging with Joe around 6:45 in the morning, and sometimes when I return, I shower then go back to bed. I don't like going back to bed after jogging usually, because I always have strange dreams.

I dreamt that I was sleeping in a cave on a mountain someplace and this spectre came up and tried to like, possess me or something weird like that, but I woke up just in time and got into a fistfight with it. But the thing is, I managed to give it a gut-punch and wound up seriously injuring it; resulting in just tremendous amounts of guilt. He was rolling around the floor and crying and everything and people were coming upstairs (wearing normal clothes, I was in bearskin) and saying "Whadidja do THAT for?!" and tried to comfort it. I was all like, "He tried t'possess me!" But I still felt pretty bad nonetheless. Anyway, someone got close to it to offer a shoulder to lean on, and the monster immediately engulfed him and everyone was running around screaming and that thing was laughing amid the carnage. Just weird.

Wiggy wiggy, ah'm getting jiggy.

2006-11-25T18:12:00.000-08:00

Good news!

I've made a friend up hea' named Joe. Joe is my age, but more importantly Joe is a body-builder. Don't worry; he's not of those ignorant thick-necked wannabe tough guys scared of his mother; he's quite calm AND he's gone and put me on a diet, believe it or not!

Yes, a friend and a personal trainer, all in one. What luck, eh? And for free. I'm taking those one-a-day vitamins for men now and exercising/eating right and all that stuff- so here's the diet he gave me, so you can go an' do it yerself. Share the wealth, man! Send this to yer friends!

DIET

Eggs
Lean beef or lean steak
Tuna (Flaked- good choice, coz its cheap)
Broccoli
Skim Milk (Your body takes a long time to break down milk products, apparently)
Leafy Greens
Egg Whites
One-A-Day Nutrient Tablets (for men/women)
Fish Oil Capsules

Try to drink at least 4 litres of water a day. That sounds like a lot and it is; you don't have to go zealous with it- just drink water instead of pop or whatever. Alot of the water we drink everyday comes from other things like milk and stuff- water is good! Just remember that. Oh and I've asked-- you're allowed two cups of coffee a day.

Breakfast

- 2 eggs
- 1 thing of porridge

Snack

-Banana, or some other piece of fruit
-You're allowed a tuna fish sandwich with your snack

Lunch

-Salad (Only 2 tbls of dressing)
-lean beef/ lean chicken/ lean steak (Serving: One cup)

Snack

-One piece of fruit (Orange)

Supper

-Tuna with 1 and 1/2 of veg

Snack

-Low fat yogurt (Serving: 3/4 - 1 cup)

Now Joe was careful to stress somethings to me. This diet is supposed to go hand in hand with excercise- the moment you wake up in the morning, do some excercise- namely cardio (running, walking, etc.) Just do something for 25-30 minutes the moment you get out of bed, and do the exercise hard enough to the point where you 'feel like shit.' Just be sure you come in sweaty and panting. Do this every day except Wensday and Saturday. Your body needs to heal itself!

Have your breakfast and shower, and go on with your day. Be sure to have breakfast after eating- that way your body burns pure fat to keep going.

It is neccessary to have those snacks; they increase metabolism and allow your body to burn off more stuff, especially as you sleep. The way the diet is set up allows your body to burn fat while you sleep and as you excercise. You'll probably be hungry while working out; but thats normal, and breakfast is coming.

There's an important note about the vegetables- Microwaving food is very bad. There's an order to preparing veg here:

1. Raw - The very best way to have your veg. You can eat this with dip, but only 2 tbls.
2. Boiled - The second best way.
3. Microwaved - The very worst way. Microwaving totally ruins any nutritional value veg has- avoid doing microwaving at all cost! I guess its called 'nuking' for a reason, eh?

Something to remember is that motivation is the key here. Joe described it to me like a religion- you gotta follow it and keep at it and you'll be rewarded in the end.

Good luck all! And remember: a healthy cat is a happy cat!

Very nice... too bad its a commercial, eh?

2006-11-09T20:08:00.000-08:00

http://www.devilducky.com/media/41760/

A really great looking airline commerical played at the superbowl! And you know what I say- if its good enough for the superbowl, its good enough for this blog;)

Look at what my amazing sister found!

2006-10-01T12:54:00.000-07:00

http://www.allsimps.com/

It's EVERY episode of the Simpsons! Fer free!!!

The Halloween wuns are t'best, baby. Di yerself a favour and have a butcher's. ;)

Fall

2006-09-29T15:12:00.000-07:00

Its raining right now.

"Oh?"

Yeah.

Here I am, in a college, after school. 6:40 in the evening, no one persecuting me, no one asking me if I'm in place- just here, just waiting for the rain to pass. I'm on top of everything, and the rains coming down in sheets.

Its kind of funny how things turn out.

Years ago I never would've thought I'd be taking a surveying course. Years ago I was so different. There's no sudden change of character, everything is gradual, and I can hear the rain outside and I feel something I thought I had lost a long time ago.

I remember listening to the radio one day, a woman was one talking about the dark ages. She said that a dark age isn't just medieval stuff; a dark age comes when a civilization reaches its peak and cannot better itself- she thought we're in one of those right now.

Even the kids in the class who aren't saying anything and keeping out of sight are having an effect on everyone else in the class, whether they know it or not. Everyone in the world is the same way.

You try to be the change you want to see in the world, but its so hard. And if you make excuses you feel worse, because you can't lie to yourself, not really.

My darling, the wind falls in like stonesfrom the whitehearted water and when we touch we enter touch entirely. No one is alone. Men kill for this, or for as much.

Madama Butterfly

2006-09-28T19:53:00.000-07:00

An animator's take on the classic opera. Be forewarned, however- it is a little sad- probably the most disheartening stop-motion video you're likely to see!

http://mirror4.video.blip.tv/DeK-Aria252.mp4

Thats worth a look, eh?

Something hilarious I found on my dad's blog

2006-09-26T16:57:00.000-07:00

Communtist party! Geddit?

Social Situations

2006-09-18T12:21:00.000-07:00

One of the courses required here is Communications. Today in class we were conducting job interviews with one another, and my partner (jokingly) complemented my movie-star good looks (to get the job, see) making me snort a laugh, blowing a snot on my shirt.

Does that ever happen to you? And you don't know where its landed or if its just hanging outside your nose, and part of you is thinking "Hey! Maybe they haven't noticed it yet!" But chances are, they have.

Hello all!

2006-09-08T14:14:00.000-07:00

I've safely made it to Lawerncetown in one piece. My first week has gone pretty smoothly, and my four room-mates aren't stealing my stuff as I feared- a big plus. I'll be returning to Halifax tommorow to get some stuff, though by the looks of it, I won't be travelling as much as I'd like to. Anyway, we won't be getting the net up hea' for a while, so my posts may become less and less frequent- but if enough of you petition I'll set up a site or something with lots of dazzling pictures of me; enuf t'tide y'over until me next post.

On the fifth I had my jaw unwired- I think the muscles in my joints have atrophied somewhat (if you don't use it...) and it hurts to open- but at least they're off. As you kin imagine, I look quite odd when I'm eating, and these elastics I've got on hurt my teeth. Everything is changing and becoming more different by the day- I'm thinking of calling this stage of my life from now on 'My Second Puberty.'

The Guilty

2006-08-31T09:51:00.000-07:00

There's this little kitten thats been comin' around looking for food and hugs. Its the cutest thing- he comes right into the house and prances around and everything. But the thing is, we already have a full-grown cat named Oscar whom all three of us love very much.

We feel so bad- its almost like adultry; we're petting another cat. Mix in the fact that this is a spry kitten and Oscar is overweight and doesn't like to play very often and it makes the 'cheating sensation' even more real.

The Great Hunger

2006-08-29T11:09:00.000-07:00

by Patrick Kavanagh

I
Clay is the word and clay is the flesh
Where the potato-gatherers like mechanised scarecrows move
Along the side-fall of the hill - Maguire and his men.
If we watch them an hour is there anything we can prove
Of life as it is broken-backed over the Book
Of Death? Here crows gabble over worms and frogs
And the gulls like old newspapers are blown clear of the hedges, luckily.
Is there some light of imagination in these wet clods?
Or why do we stand here shivering?
Which of these men
Loved the light and the queen
Too long virgin? Yesterday was summer. Who was it promised marriage to himself
Before apples were hung from the ceilings for Hallowe'en?
We will wait and watch the tragedy to the last curtain,
Till the last soul passively like a bag of wet clay
Rolls down the side of the hill, diverted by the angles
Where the plough missed or a spade stands, straitening the way.
A dog lying on a torn jacket under a heeled-up cart,
A horse nosing along the posied headland, trailing
A rusty plough. Three heads hanging between wide-apart legs.
October playing a symphony on a slack wire paling.
Maguire watches the drills flattened out
And the flints that lit a candle for him on a June altar
Flameless. The drills slipped by and the days slipped by
And he trembled his head away and ran free from the world's halter,
And thought himself wiser than any man in the townland
When he laughed over pints of porter
Of how he came free from every net spread
In the gaps of experience. He shook a knowing head
And pretended to his soul
That children are tedious in hurrying fields of April
Where men are spanging across wide furrows.
Lost in the passion that never needs a wife
The pricks that pricked were the pointed pins of harrows.
Children scream so loud that the crows could bring
The seed of an acre away with crow-rude jeers.
Patrick Maguire, he called his dog and he flung a stone in the air
And hallooed the birds away that were the birds of the years.
Turn over the weedy clods and tease out the tangled skeins.
What is he looking for there?
He thinks it is a potato, but we know better
Than his mud-gloved fingers probe in this insensitive hair.
'Move forward the basket and balance it steady
In this hollow. Pull down the shafts of that cart, Joe,
And straddle the horse,' Maguire calls.
'The wind's over Brannagan's, now that means rain.
Graip up some withered stalks and see that no potato falls
Over the tail-board going down the ruckety pass -
And that's a job we'll have to do in December,
Gravel it and build a kerb on the bog-side. Is that Cassidy's ass
Out in my clover? Curse o' God
Where is that dog?.
Never where he's wanted' Maguire grunts and spits
Through a clay-wattled moustache and stares about him from the height.
His dream changes like the cloud-swung wind
And he is not so sure now if his mother was right
When she praised the man who made a field his bride.
Watch him, watch him, that man on a hill whose spirit
Is a wet sack flapping about the knees of time.
He lives that his little fields may stay fertile when his own body
Is spread in the bottom of a ditch under two coulters crossed in Christ's Name.
He was suspicious in his youth as a rat near strange bread,
When girls laughed; when they screamed he knew that meant
The cry of fillies in season. He could not walk
The easy road to destiny. He dreamt
The innocence of young brambles to hooked treachery.
O the grip, O the grip of irregular fields! No man escapes.
It could not be that back of the hills love was free
And ditches straight.
No monster hand lifted up children and put down apes
As here.
'O God if I had been wiser!'
That was his sigh like the brown breeze in the thistles.
He looks, towards his house and haggard. 'O God if I had been wiser!'
But now a crumpled leaf from the whitethorn bushes
Darts like a frightened robin, and the fence
Shows the green of after-grass through a little window,
And he knows that his own heart is calling his mother a liar
God's truth is life - even the grotesque shapes of his foulest fire.
The horse lifts its head and cranes
Through the whins and stones
To lip late passion in the crawling clover.
In the gap there's a bush weighted with boulders like morality,
The fools of life bleed if they climb over.
The wind leans from Brady's, and the coltsfoot leaves are holed with rust,
Rain fills the cart-tracks and the sole-plate grooves;
A yellow sun reflects in Donaghmoyne
The poignant light in puddles shaped by hooves.
Come with me, Imagination, into this iron house
And we will watch from the doorway the years run back,
And we will know what a peasant's left hand wrote on the page.
Be easy, October. No cackle hen, horse neigh, tree sough, duck quack.

II
Maguiire was faithful to death:
He stayed with his mother till she died
At the age of ninety-one.
She stayed too long,
Wife and mother in one.
When she died
The knuckle-bones were cutting the skin of her son's backside
And he was sixty-five.
O he loved his mother
Above all others.
O he loved his ploughs
And he loved his cows
And his happiest dream
Was to clean his arse
With perennial grass
On the bank of some summer stream;
To smoke his pipe
In a sheltered gripe
In the middle of July.
His face in a mist
And two stones in his fist
And an impotent worm on his thigh.
But his passion became a plague
For he grew feeble bringing the vague
Women of his mind to lust nearness,
Once a week at least flesh must make an appearance.
So Maguire got tired
Of the no-target gun fired
And returned to his headland of carrots and cabbage
To the fields once again
Where eunuchs can be men
And life is more lousy than savage.

III .
Poor Paddy Maguire, a fourteen-hour day
He worked for years. It was he that lit the fire
And boiled the kettle and gave the cows their hay.
His mother tall hard as a Protestant spire
Came down the stairs barefoot at the kettle-call
And talked to her son sharply: 'Did you let
The hens out, you?' She had a venomous drawl
And a wizened face like moth-eaten leatherette.
Two black cats peeped between the banisters
And gloated over the bacon-fizzling pan.
Outside the window showed tin canisters.
The snipe of Dawn fell like a whirring stone
And Patrick on a headland stood alone.
The pull is on the traces, it is March
And a cold black wind is blowing from Dundalk.
The twisting sod rolls over on her back
The virgin screams before the irresistible sock.
No worry on Maguire's mind this day
Except that he forgot to bring his matches.
'Hop back there Polly, hoy back, woa, wae,
From every second hill a neighbour watches
With all the sharpened interest of rivalry.
Yet sometimes when the sun comes through a gap
These men know God the Father in a tree:
The Holy Spirit is the rising sap,
And Christ will be the green leaves that will come
At Easter from the sealed and guarded tomb.
Primroses and the unearthly start of ferns
Among the blackthorn shadows in the ditch,
A dead sparrow and an old waistcoat. Maguire learns
As the horses turn slowly round the which is which
Of love and fear and things half born to mind
He stands between the plough-handles and he sees
At the end of a long furrow his name signed
Among the poets, prostitutes. With all miseries
He is one. Here with the unfortunate
Who for half-moments of paradise
Pay out good days and wait and wait
For sunlight-woven cloaks. O to be wise
As Respectability that knows the price of all things
And marks God's truth in pounds and pence and farthings.

IV
April, and no one able to calculate
How far it is to harvest. They put down
The seeds blindly with sensuous groping fingers
And sensual dreams sleep dreams subtly underground.
Tomorrow is Wednesday - who cares?
'Remember Eileen Farrelly? I was thinking
A man might do a damned sight worse …' That voice is blown
Through a hole in a garden wall -
And who was Eileen now cannot be known.
The cattle are out on grass
The corn is coming up evenly.
The farm folk are hurrying to catch Mass:
Christ will meet them at the end of the world, the slow and the speedier.
But the fields say: only Time can bless.
Maguire knelt beside a pillar where he could spit
Without being seen. He turned an old prayer round:
'Jesus, Mary, Joseph pray for us
Now and at the Hour.' Heaven dazzled death.
'Wonder should I cross-plough that turnip-ground.'
The tension broke. The congregation lifted it head
As one man and coughed in unison.
Five hundred hearts were hungry for life-
Who lives in Christ shall never die the death.
And the candle-lit Altar and the flowers
And the pregnant Tabernacle lifted a moment to Prophecy
Out of the clayey hours
Maguire sprinkled his face with holy water
As the congregation stood up for the Last Gospel.
He rubbed the dust off his knees with his palm, and then
Coughed the prayer phlegm up from his throat and sighed: Amen.
Once one day in June when he was walking
Among his cattle in the Yellow Meadow
He met a girl carrying a basket
And he was then a young and heated fellow.
Too earnest, too earnest! He rushed beyond the thing
To the unreal. And he saw Sin
Written in letters larger than John Bunyan dreamt of.
For the strangled impulse there is no redemption.
And that girl was gone and he was counting
The dangers in the fields where love ranted
He was helpless. He saw his cattle
And stroked their flanks in lieu of wife to handle.
He would have changed the circle if he could,
The circle that was the grass track where he ran.
Twenty times a day he ran round the field
And still there was no winning-post where the runner is cheered home.
Desperately he broke the tune,
But however he tried always the same melody lept up from the background,
The dragging step of a ploughman going home through the guttery
Headlands under an April-watery moon.
Religion, the fields and the fear of the Lord
And Ignorance giving him the coward's blow,
He dared not rise to pluck the fantasies
From the fruited Tree of Life. He bowed his head
And saw a wet weed twined about his toe.

V
Evening at the cross-roads -
Heavy heads nodding out words as wise
As the ruminations of cows after milking.
From the ragged road surface a boy picks up
A piece of gravel and stares at it-and then
Tosses it across the elm tree on to the railway.
He means nothing.
Not a damn thing
Somebody is coming over the metal railway bridge
And his hobnailed boots on the arches sound like a gong
Calling men awake. But the bridge is too narrow -
The men lift their heads a moment. That was only John,
So they dream on.
Night in the elms, night in the grass.
O we are too tired to go home yet. Two cyclists pass
Talking loudly of Kitty and Molly?
Horses or women? wisdom or folly?
A door closes on an evicted dog
Where prayers begin in Barney Meegan's kitchen :
Rosie curses the cat between her devotions;
The daughter prays that she may have three wishes -
Health and wealth and love -
From the fairy who is faith or hope or compounds of.
At the cross-roads the crowd had thinned out:
Last words were uttered. There is no to-morrow;
No future but only time stretched for the mowing of the hay
Or putting an axle in the turf-barrow.
Patrick Maguire went home and made cocoa
And broke a chunk off the loaf of wheaten bread;
His mother called down to him to look again
And make sure that the hen-house was locked. His sister grunted in bed
The sound of a sow taking up a new position.
Pat opened his trousers wide over the ashes
And dreamt himself to lewd sleepiness.
The clock ticked on. Time passes.

VI
Health and wealth and love he too dreamed of in May
As he sat on the railway slope and watched the children of the place
Picking up a primrose here and a daisy there -
They were picking up life's truth singly.
But he dreamt of the Absolute envased bouquet -
AIl or nothing. And it was nothing. For God is not all
In one place, complete
Till Hope comes in and takes it on his shoulder -
O Christ, that is what you have done for us:
In a crumb of bread the whole mystery is.
He read the symbol too sharply and turned
From the five simple doors of sense
To the door whose combination lock has puzzled
Philosopher and priest and common dunce.
Men build their heavens as they build their circles
Of friends. God is in the bits and pieces of Everyday -
A kiss here and a laugh again, and sometimes tears,
A pearl necklace round the neck of poverty.
He sat on the railway slope and watched the evening,
Too beautifully perfect to use,
And his three wishes were three stones too sharp to sit on,
Too hard to carve. Three frozen idols of a speechless muse.

VII
'Now go to Mass and pray and confess your sins
And you'll have all the luck,' his mother said.
He listened to the lie that is a woman's screen
Around a conscience when soft thighs are spread.
And all the while she was setting up the lie
She trusted in Nature that never deceives.
But her son took it as literal truth.
Religion's walls expand to the push of nature. Morality yields
To sense - but not in little tillage fields.
Life went on like that. One summer morning
Again through a hay-field on her way to the shop -
The grass was wet and over-leaned the path -
And Agnes held her skirts sensationally up,
And not because the grass was wet either.
A man was watching her, Patrick Maguire.
She was in love with passion and its weakness
And the wet grass could never cool the fire
That radiated from her unwanted womb in that metaphysical land
Where flesh was thought more spiritual than music
Among the stars - out of reach of the peasant's hand.
Ah, but the priest was one of the people too -
A farmers son - and surely he knew
The needs of a brother and sister.
Religion could not be a counter-irritant like a blister,
But the certain standard, measured and known
By which man might re-make his soul though all walls were down
And all earth's pedestalled gods thrown.

VIII
Sitting on a wooden gate,
Sitting on a wooden gate,
Sitting on a wooden gate
He didn't care a damn.
Said whatever came into his head,
Said whatever came into his head,
Said whatever came into his head
And inconsequently sang.
While his world withered away,
He had a cigarette to smoke and a pound to spend
On drink the next Saturday.
His cattle were fat
And his horses all that
Midsummer grass could make them.
The young women ran wild
And dreamed of a child
Joy dreams though the fathers might forsake them
But no one would take them;
No man could ever see
That their skirts had loosed buttons,
O the men were as blind as could be.
And Patrick Maguire
From his. purgatory fire
Called the gods of the Christian to prove
That this twisted skein
Was the necessary pain
And not the rope that was strangling true love.
But sitting on a wooden gate
Sometime in July
When he was thirty-four or five
He gloried in the lie:
He made it read the way it should,
He made life read the evil good
While he cursed the ascetic brotherhood
Without knowing why.
Sitting on a wooden gate
All, all alone
He sang and laughed
Like a man quite daft,
Or like a man on a channel raft
He fantasied forth his groan.
Sitting on a wooden gate,
Sitting on a wooden gate,
Sitting on a wooden gate
He rode in day-dream cars.
He locked his body with his knees
When the gate swung too much in the breeze.
But while he caught high ecstasies
Life slipped between the bars.

IX
He gave himself another year,
Something was bound to happen before then -
The circle would break down
And he would carve the new one to his own will.
A new rhythm is a new life
And in it marriage is hung and money.
He would be a new man walking through unbroken meadows
Of dawn in the year of One.
The poor peasant talking to himself in a stable door
An ignorant peasant deep in dung.
What can the passers-by think otherwise?
Where is his silver bowl of knowledge hung?
Why should men be asked to believe in a soul
That is only the mark of a hoof in guttery gaps?
A man is what is written on the label.
And the passing world stares but no one stops
To look closer. So back to the growing crops
And the ridges he never loved.
Nobody will ever know how much tortured poetry the pulled weeds on the ridge wrote
Before they withered in the July sun,
Nobody will ever read the wild, sprawling, scrawling mad woman's signature,
The hysteria and the boredom of the enclosed nun of his thought.
Like the afterbirth of a cow stretched on a branch in the wind
Life dried in the veins of these women and men:
'The grey and grief and unlove,
The bones in the backs of their hands,
And the chapel pressing its low ceiling over them.
Sometimes they did laugh and see the sunlight,
A narrow slice of divine instruction.
Going along the river at the bend of Sunday
The trout played in the pools encouragement
To jump in love though death bait the hook.
And there would be girls sitting on the grass banks of lanes.
Stretch-legged and lingering staring -
A man might take one of them if he had the courage.
But 'No' was in every sentence of their story
Except when the public-house came in and shouted its piece.
The yellow buttercups and the bluebells among the whin bushes
On rocks in the middle of ploughing
Was a bright spoke in the wheel
Of the peasant's mill.
The goldfinches on the railway paling were worth looking at -
A man might imagine then
Himself in Brazil and these birds the birds of paradise
And the Amazon and the romance traced on the school map lived again.
Talk in evening corners and under trees
Was like an old book found in a king's tomb.
The children gathered round like students and listened
And some of the saga defied the draught in the open tomb
And was not blown.

X
Their intellectual life consisted in reading
Reynolds News or the Sunday Dispatch,
With sometimes an old almanac brought down from the ceiling
Or a school reader brown with the droppings of thatch.
The sporting results or the headlines of war
Was a humbug profound as the highbrow's Arcana.
Pat tried to be wise to the abstraction of all that
But its secret dribbled down his waistcoat like a drink from a strainer.
He wagered a bob each way on the Derby,
He got a straight tip from a man in a shop -
A double from the Guineas it was and thought himself
A master mathematician when one of them came up
And he could explain how much he'd have drawn
On the double if the second leg had followed the first.
He was betting on form and breeding, he claimed,
And the man that did that could never be burst.
After that they went on to the war, and the generals
On both sides were shown to be stupid as hell.
If he'd taken that road, they remarked of a Marshal,
He'd have … O they know their geography well
This was their university. Maguire was an undergraduate
Who dreamed from his lowly position of rising
To a professorship like Larry McKenna or Duffy
Or the pig-gelder Nallon whose knowledge was amazing.
'A treble, full multiple odds … That's flat porter …
Another one … No, you're wrong about that thing I was telling you. .
Did you part with your filly, Jack? I heard that you sold her.…'
The students were all savants by the time of pub-close.

XI
A year passed and another hurried after it
And Patrick Maguire was still six months behind life -
His mother six months ahead of it;
His sister straddle-legged across it: -
One leg in hell and the other in heaven
And between the purgatory of middle-aged virginity -
She prayed for release to heaven or hell.
His mother's voice grew thinner like a rust-worn knife
But it cut venomously as it thinned,
It cut him up the middle till he became more woman than man,
And it cut through to his mind before the end.
Another field whitened in the April air
And the harrows rattled over the seed.
He gathered the loose stones off the ridges carefully
And grumbled to his men to hurry. He looked like a man who could give advice
To foolish young fellows. He was forty-seven,
And there was depth in his jaw and his voice was the voice of a great cattle-dealer,
A man with whom the fair-green gods break even.
'I think I ploughed that lea the proper depth,
She ought to give a crop if any land gives …
Drive slower with the foal-mare, Joe.'
Joe, a young man of imagined wives,
Smiles to himself and answered like a slave:
'You needn't fear or fret.
I'm taking her as easy, as easy as …
Easy there Fanny, easy, pet.'
They loaded the day-scoured implements on the cart
As the shadows of poplars crookened the furrows.
It was the evening, evening. Patrick was forgetting to be lonely
As he used to be in Aprils long ago.
It was the menopause, the misery-pause.
The schoolgirls passed his house laughing every morning
And sometimes they spoke to him familiarly -
He had an idea. Schoolgirls of thirteen
Would see no political intrigue in an old man's friendship.
Love
The heifer waiting to be nosed by the old bull.
That notion passed too - there was the danger of talk
And jails are narrower than the five-sod ridge
And colder than the black hills facing Armagh in February.
He sinned over the warm ashes again and his crime
The law's long arm could not serve with time.
His face set like an old judge's pose:
Respectability and righteousness,
Stand for no nonsense.
The priest from the altar called Patrick Maguire's name
To hold the collecting-box in the chapel door
During all the Sundays of May.
His neighbours envied him his holy rise,
But he walked down from the church with affected indifference
And took the measure of heaven angle-wise.
He still could laugh and sing,
But not the wild laugh or the abandoned harmony now
That called the world to new silliness from the top of a wooden gate
When thirty-five could take the sparrow's bow.
Let us be kind, let us be kind and sympathetic:
Maybe life is not for joking or for finding happiness in -
This tiny light in Oriental Darkness
Looking out chance windows of poetry or prayer.
And the grief and defeat of men like these peasants
Is God's way - maybe - and we must not want too much
To see.
The twisted thread is stronger than the wind-swept fleece.
And in the end who shall rest in truth's high peace?
Or whose is the world now, even now?
O let us kneel where the blind ploughman kneels
And learn to live without despairing
In a mud-walled space -
Illiterate unknown and unknowing.
Let us kneel where he kneels
And feel what he feels.
One day he saw a daisy and he thought it
Reminded him of his childhood -
He stopped his cart to look at it.
Was there a fairy hiding behind it?
He helped a poor woman whose cow
Had died on her;
He dragged home a drunken man on a winter's night
And one rare moment he heard the young people playing on the railway stile
And he wished them happiness and whatever they most desired from life.
He saw the sunlight and begrudged no man
His share of what the miserly soil and soul
Gives in a season to a ploughman.
And he cried for his own loss one late night on the pillow
And yet thanked the God who had arranged these things.
Was he then a saint?
A Matt Talbot of Monaghan?
His sister Mary Anne spat poison at the children
Who sometimes came to the door selling raffle tickets
For holy funds.
'Get out, you little tramps!' she would scream
As she shook to the hens an armful of crumbs,
But Patrick often put his hand deep down
In his trouser-pocket and fingered out a penny
Or maybe a tobacco-stained caramel.
'You're soft,' said the sister; 'with other people's money
It's not a bit funny.'
The cards are shuffled and the deck
Laid flat for cutting - Tom Malone
Cut for trump. I think we'll make
This game, the last, a tanner one.
Hearts. Right. I see you're breaking
Your two-year-old. Play quick, Maguire,
The clock there says it's half-past ten -
Kate, throw another sod on that fire.
One of the card-players laughs and spits
Into the flame across a shoulder.
Outside, a noise like a rat
Among the hen-roosts.
The cock crows over
The frosted townland of the night.
Eleven o'clock and still the game
Goes on and the players seem to be
Drunk in an Orient opium den.
Midnight, one o'clock, two.
Somebody's leg has fallen asleep.
What about home? Maguire, are you
Using your double-tree this week?
Why? do you want it? Play the ace.
There's it, and that's the last card for me.
A wonderful night, we had. Duffy's place
Is very convenient. Is that a ghost or a tree?
And so they go home with dragging feet
And their voices rumble like laden carts.
And they are happy as the dead or sleeping …
I should have led that ace of hearts.

XII
The fields were bleached white,
The wooden tubs full of water
Were white in the winds
That blew through Brannagan's Gap on their way from Siberia;
The cows on the grassless heights .
Followed the hay that had wings -
The February fodder that hung itself on the black branches
Of the hill-top hedge.
A man stood beside a potato-pit
And clapped his arms
And pranced on the crisp roots
And shouted to warm himself.
Then he buck-leaped about the potatoes
And scooped them into a basket.
He looked like a bucking suck-calf
Whose spine was being tickled.
Sometimes he stared across the bogs
And sometimes he straightened his back and vaguely whistled
A tune that weakened his spirit
And saddened his terrier dog's.
A neighbour passed with a spade on his shoulder
And Patrick Maguire bent like a bridge
Whistled-good morning under his oxter
And the man the other side of the hedge
Champed his spade on the road at his toes
And talked an old sentimentality
While the wind blew under his clothes.
The mother sickened and stayed in bed all day,
Her head hardly dented the pillow, so light and thin it had worn,
But she still enquired after the household affairs.
She held the strings of her children's Punch and Judy, and when a mouth opened
It was her truth that the dolls would have spoken
If they hadn't been made of wood and tin -
'Did you open the barn door, Pat, to let the young calves in?'
The priest called to see her every Saturday
And she told him her troubles and fears:
'If Mary Anne was settled I'd die in peace -
I'm getting on in years.'
'You were a good woman,' said the priest,
'And your children will miss you when you're gone.
The likes of you this parish never knew,
I'm sure they'll not forget the work you've done.'
She reached five bony crooks under the tick -
'Five pounds for Masses - won't you say them quick.'
She died one morning in the beginning of May
And a shower of sparrow-notes was the litany for her dying.
The holy water was sprinkled on the bed-clothes
And her children stood around the bed and cried because it was too late for crying.
A mother dead! The tired sentiment:
'Mother, Mother' was a shallow pool
Where sorrow hardly could wash its feet …
Mary Anne came away from the deathbed and boiled the calves their gruel.
'O what was I doing when the procession passed?
Where was I looking? Young women and men
And I might have joined them.
Who bent the coin of my destiny
That it stuck in the slot?
I remember a night we walked
Through the moon of Donaghmoyne,
Four of us seeking adventure,
It was midsummer forty years ago.
Now I know
The moment that gave the turn to my life.
O Christ! I am locked in a stable with pigs and cows for ever.

XIII
The world looks on
And talks of the peasant:
The peasant has no worries;
In his little lyrical fields He ploughs and sows;
He eats fresh food,
He loves fresh women, He is his own master
As it was in the Beginning
The simpleness of peasant life.
The birds that sing for him are eternal choirs ,
Everywhere he walks there are flowers.
His heart is pure, His mind is clear,
He can talk to God as Moses and Isaiah talked
The peasant who is only one remove from the beasts he drives. '
"The travellers stop their cars to gape over the green bank into his fields: -
There is the source from which all cultures rise,
And all religions,
There is the pool in which the poet dips
And the musician.
Without the peasant base civilisation must die,
Unless the clay is in the mouth the singer's singing is useless.
The travellers touch the roots of the grass and feel renewed
When they grasp the steering wheels again.
The peasant is the unspoiled child of Prophecy,
The peasant is all virtues - let us salute him without irony
The peasant ploughman who is half a vegetable -
Who can react to sun and rain and sometimes even
Regret that the Maker of Light had not touched him more intensely.
Brought him up from the sub-soil to an existence
Of conscious joy. He was not born blind.
He is not always blind: sometimes the cataract yields
To sudden stone-falling or the desire to breed.
The girls pass along the roads
And he can remember what man is,
But there is nothing he can do.
Is there nothing he can do?
Is there no escape?
No escape, no escape.
The cows and horses breed,
And the potato-seed
Gives a bud and a root and rots
In the good mother's way with her sons;
The fledged bird is thrown
From the nest - on its own.
But the peasant in his little acres is tied
To a mother's womb by the wind-toughened navel-cord
Like a goat tethered to the stump of a tree -
He circles around and around wondering why it should be.
No crash, No drama.
That was how his life happened.
No mad hooves galloping in the sky,
But the weak, washy way of true tragedy -
A sick horse nosing around the meadow for a clean place to die.

XIV
We may come out in the October reality, Imagination,
The sleety wind no longer slants to the black hill where Maguire
And his men are now collecting the scattered harness and baskets.
The dog sitting on a wisp of dry stalks
Watches them through the shadows.
'Back in, back in.' One talks to the horse as to a brother.
Maguire himself is patting a potato-pit against the weather -
An old man fondling a new-piled grave:
'Joe, I hope you didn't forget to hide the spade .
For there's rogues in the townland.
Hide it flat in a furrow.
I think we ought to be finished by to-morrow.
Their voices through the darkness sound like voices from a cave,
A dull thudding far away, futile, feeble, far away,
First cousins to the ghosts of the townland.
A light stands in a window. Mary Anne
Has the table set and the tea-pot waiting in the ashes.
She goes to the door and listens and then she calls
From the top of the haggard-wall :
'What's keeping you
And the cows to be milked and all the other work there's to do?'
'All right, all right
We'll not stay here all night '
Applause, applause,
The curtain falls.
Applause, applause
From the homing carts and the trees
And the bawling cows at the gates.
From the screeching water-hens
And the mill-race heavy with the Lammas floods curving over the weir
A train at the station blowing off steam
And the hysterical laughter of the defeated everywhere.
Night, and the futile cards are shuffled again.
Maguire spreads his legs over the impotent cinders that wake no manhood now
And he hardly looks to see which card is trump.
His sister tightens her legs and her lips and frizzles up
Like the wick of an oil-less lamp.
The curtain falls -
Applause, applause.
Maguire is not afraid of death, the Church will light him a candle
To see his way through the vaults and he'll understand the
Quality of the clay that dribbles over his coffin.
He'll know the names of the roots that climb down to tickle his feet.
And he will feel no different than when he walked through Donaghmoyne.
If he stretches out a hand - a wet clod,
If he opens his nostrils - a dungy smell;
If he opens his eyes once in a million years -
Through a crack in the crust of the earth he may see a face nodding in
Or a woman's legs.
Shut them again for that sight is sin.
He will hardly remember that life happened to him -
Something was brighter a moment. Somebody sang in the distance
A procession passed down a mesmerized street.
He remembers names like Easter and Christmas
By colour his fields were.
Maybe he will be born again, a bird of an angel's conceit
To sing the gospel of life
To a music as flightily tangent
As a tune on an oboe.
And the serious look of his fields will have changed to the leer of a hobo.
Swaggering celestially home to his three wishes granted.
Will that be? will that be?
Or is the earth right that laughs haw-haw
And does not believe
In an unearthly law.
The earth that says:
Patrick Maguire, the old peasant, can neither be damned nor glorified:
The graveyard in which he will lie will be just a deep-drilled potato-field
Where the seed gets no chance to come through
To the fun of the sun.
The tongue in his mouth is the root of a yew.
Silence, silence. The story is done.
He stands in the doorway of his house
A ragged sculpture of the wind,
October creaks the rotted mattress,
The bedposts fall. No hope. No lust.
The hungry fiend
Screams the apocalypse of clay
In every corner of this land.

The Dark Knight

2006-08-27T13:09:00.000-07:00

Good news!

The sequel to the much-loved Batman Begins movie will be called 'The Dark Knight.' The villain this time will be Batman's nemesis, Joker- Batman stays true to his roots and does NOT kill the Joker during the course of the film and takes him to court- resulting in Joker splashing acid on Gotham's D.A.-- Harvey Dent.

The original cast will be returning (except Katie Holmes and Liam Neeson, and the guys who got blown up of course) and Heath Ledger will be portraying the Clown Prince of Crime 'imself. Jack Nicholson was never all that good an actor; I think he'll do fine.

roley-paroley

2006-08-27T02:07:00.000-07:00

I keep tossing and turing at night- its the dreams I have, methinks. I dream every night- I imagine its sommat that'll go away as I grow older, but who knows. Tonight I dreamt that I was sent to prison, and I was able to get out of fights and raped and stuff by making the inmates laugh- I forget just how I managed t'do that, probably just funny faces or something or something. But one night I got invited to a prison break, and we dug far into the earth and come out in China. But it was communist China, and they put me into one of their prisons. It was terrible, because I don't speak a word of Chinese.

The funny thing is, I've dreamt of going to China before, and when I got there, I was like 'Wow, its just like my dreams.'

Earth Worm Jim!

2006-08-27T01:54:00.000-07:00

You Tube is a boon to anyone with at least a decent phone line connection. Seriously. Thanks to the wonderous site, I've found REALLY old episodes of everyone's favorite annelid, EWJ! I loved this stuff as a kid; and any one of my age thinks of the show with fondly-ness as well.

EWJ is was originally a video game which spawned several sequels, and of course the show. The fellow who does Homer off of the Simpsons does a great job bringing EWJ t'life- I guess this was all before he began getting paid like 13-million dollars per episode. It stars a gigantic earthworm in a robotic super-suit, equipped with an internal-combustion engine (complete with a rip-cord) and it all runs on 'the Battery of the Gods.' Funny, funny stuff...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFFxEOBAAXo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEEGuGETzXI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSvUhjvtmzE

Einherjar!

2006-08-26T01:32:00.000-07:00

Today I went out to buy a pair of steel toed boots for the course I'll be taking up at NSCC- I'll be 'needing' them, apparently (YIKES!).

When I was a little kid, my mom took me and my sister out t'get a pair of sneakers each. Mine had little bolts of lightning grafted onto the sides, and being like seven or eight, I thought they were the coolest damn things in the world. Today, when I got these here boots, well- lets just say I haven't had that kind of excitement about a pair of shoes in a LONG time.

Its so funny- you hear about people who only care aboot buying shoes and stuff-- I've never felt that little tingle until t'day. Not only are they practical and wearable to all situations (even weddings) but its also good to know that if something came flying out of the sky my feet would be in poifect harmony. I'm thinking I'll wear these babies till they get right worn out- though its never easy breaking in footwear reinforced by steel.

George Carlin: Carlin on Campus

2006-08-25T11:19:00.000-07:00

A video of the second-greatest comedian of all time, George Carlin has been released on the net! This is his whole act, including the sports talk and a skit he does at the beginning.

He shore duz make a lotsa funny faces ;)

http://www.pistolwimp.com/media/50031/

This picture challenges my perception of reality

2006-08-24T21:32:00.000-07:00

My cousin Caleb as you can see is half human, half chameleon. See how we stops all body movement and become as still as the water- SEE how he seamlessly blends in with the painting on the wall as if he was an idea that was conceived in the painters mind!

This was taken on a trip to Quebec, by the by. Excellent photo Caleb!

Look at the hands ;)

tiny life

2006-08-24T13:53:00.000-07:00

Suddenly waking up, I was shocked to find myself in the decrepid body of an 80-year old man. Scared and alone in a strange room, I began crying outloud. Help! Help! In comes this over-weight over-worked unenthusiastic government careworker, like the whole situation was nothing. Babbling, frightened in trembling fears, I tried to tell 'im my bind, but I couldn't think of the words.

Anyway he goes about his duties in typical fashion and explains to me in an uninterested way (as if he had done it zillions of times before) that I have this weird condition where you fall asleep at 18 and wake up years later. I realized I had missed everything between youth and old age- growing up, having children, falling in love; everything. And then I wept, like some grandmother-- I wanted to tear my teeth out; I cannot say what I was feeling.

And THEN I woke up. Scary, scary, scary...

Jenny Kissed Me.

2006-08-23T21:31:00.000-07:00

Jenny kiss'd me when we met,

Jumping from the chair she sat in;

Time, you thief, who love to get

Sweets into your list, put that in!

Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,

Say that health and wealth have miss'd me,

Say I'm growing old, but add,

Jenny kiss'd me.

-Leigh Hunt

Isn't that nice?

'Time, you thief.'
'If you have to end this so quickly be sure to keep good note of it!'

Different people always take notice of different and subtle things. The speaker was touched at how she jumped from her chair; and I love how he places the act high up on the list of things people (and God, apparently) will use to judge him. Its a beautiful little poem, I'm glad there are Jenny's and speakers like that out in the world.

My thumbs! My beautiful thumbs!

2006-08-23T12:29:00.000-07:00

Like many other young men (and women, startlingly enough) I've been looking forward to the next generation console wars. The video-gaming industry has been making leaps and bounds in the past decade and its now taking the world by storm, with the growing anticipation of the console sequels-- the PlayStaion 3, the X Box 360, and the Gamecubes son, the Wii. I'm leaning towards the Wii myself- it'll of course feature improved graphics and whatnot, but it'll also have the staple of series which have made Nintendo famous- Zelda, Metroid, and everyones favorite plumber, Mario.

I've just found out when they're releasing the Wii- not sometime in 2007 like I thought but actually in the fourth quarter of 2006. Its exciting; I'm sorry. It has a bunch of new and innovative features, probably greatest out of 'em is the price tag- betwixt 200 and 250 bucks, making it the most affordable out of the three next-generation consoles.Everyone in Japan has a DS, a PSP, and will probably have a Wii or PS3. The video-gaming phenomena is also (surprisingly) huge in the UK- here in North America its sort of a melting pot. To us its a hobby; to the East and far West its a frickin' passion.

What the hell was Sony thinking pricing the PlayStation 3 at 600 dollars? American? Its a video-game system, not an add-on for your car! People play games for the same reason they read books- to escape. To relax-- somethin' Sony won't be doing for the next while, methinks. Everyone on the net is (correctly) guessing the the Wii will beat out competition and be the console-king of this generation; all thanks to the innovation and price tag. Not everyone are millionares like you, Sony. Bad Sony, bad!

Of course the price tag will drop on the PS3, it has to. The PS3 boasts an assortment of gizmos including the ability to play 'Blu-Ray' discs. A 'Blu-Ray' disc is basically DVD disc but holds something like 60 gigabytes, whilst the DVD disc can hold only three or four. This huge amount of space allows the PS3 to pull of incredible and brilliant looking graphics, but not good enough to warrant a 600 dollar price tag. No-sir-ee bob.

The only bad thing about the Wii really is the name. Wii, pronounced 'wee.' Nintendo indended to have an encompassing meaning to the name, but here in North America 'wee' means small. Its also what you do in the bathroom. It'll be awkward when people ask you what you do in your spare time during social situations; I just might leave my 'Wii' out of it.

Also a bit troubling is the innovation part of Nintendo. While Microsoft and their X Box 360 and Sony with their PS3 focused mainly on improved graphics, the Wii created the 'Wii-Mote,' a motion detecting blue-tooth enabled controller which you cast like a fishing reel during a fishing game or swing like a sword during fantasy. Whether or not this is actually a fun idea or an annoyance 'wii-mains' to be seen.

perchance to dream

2006-08-23T10:21:00.000-07:00

My sister Claire has returned safe n' sound from her escapades at St. Thomas University. Claire went allll the way up thar and stayed for one week, attending philosophy classes on a much deserved bursary and returned with lots of tales of excitement and humour. Welcome back Claire!

The nest that sailed the sky

2006-08-23T10:01:00.000-07:00

I'll be flying the nest soon (though I'll be paying frequent visits back t'Mom and Claire, my sister) to attend NSCC, in a tiny little town about two hours away.

And this street is TINY, with a capital TIE-- its like a street. Thats all. I don't really like small towns all to much, but I'm still optimistic.

Anyway, the average workday up there is something like 16 hours, so I might not be able to write the blog everyday.

But I'm sure lotsa things will happen up there, so I'll try to write when I can.

Guess who has a blog?

2006-08-21T14:47:00.000-07:00

When I got this blog I was intending to write in it everyday; and I was excited by the whole idea of having an online sandbox so people can see how I update it everyday. Immediately I sent out a whole buncha emails (none of which have responded to so far) but one comment on a post I made on this blog- by none other but my father himself! He had a blog the entire time-- whut were the odds? The Romans had a word for thuff like that happenin'-- serendipity!

http://retiredbarrister.blogspot.com/

There's the link t'his site. Be nice!

Oh sugar!

2006-08-21T10:37:00.000-07:00

Here's a really good episode of South Park. With any show, there are some real stinker-episodes, but South Park usually doesn't dissapoint. This'd be an example of one of their more creative, and funnier episodes, with the great moral at the end.

http://www.pistolwimp.com/media/45021/

Uh-oh, here comes the end of the world.

2006-08-19T20:06:00.000-07:00

Have you guys ever heard of Lovecraft? What about the Cthulhu mythos? If you haven't, I'll fill you in. Lovecraft was a Victorian writer who dreamed up these fantastic, dark stories about these really old gods who have been trapped inside of the earth for so long they've fallen into obscurity- but they're still alive, and waiting for the right time to be released. The protagonists of Lovecraft's stories are people who are usually drawn to a place filled with crazy people (who later turn out to be deranged followers of these old gods) and has to fight against them whilst holding onto their sanity- these stories, as you can guess, are very psychologicaly disturbing.

Now your gon' laugh, but I actually like reading more about the gods themselves than reading the stories. These old ones are tapped beneath the sea and collosal in size-- and they're gods, so if a single thought of theirs made its way into a humans mind, they'd go crazy like that- coz the gods think big thoughts, see.

Most famous of the Old Ones is Cthulhu. The most detailed descriptions of Cthulhu in "The Call of Cthulhu" are based on statues of the creature. One, constructed by an artist after a series of baleful dreams, is said to have "yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature.... A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings." Another, recovered by police from a raid on a murderous cult, "represented a monster of vaguely anthropod outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind." Its food fer the imagination!

But look- they're making it into a movie. Here's the trailer. It looks awful. Surely they can't be allowed to ruin such a classic?...

http://www.cthulhuthemovie.com//cthulhutrailer.htm

Anyway, here's a free reading of a Lovecraft story. See for yourself; its pretty cool.

http://www.greylodge.org/podcast/audio_books/Lovecraft/Lovecraft_-_Call_Cthulhu_Side1.mp3

I've been feeding you the rhythm

2006-08-18T22:58:00.000-07:00

Good lord. I've found gold on the internet; utter gold. Making it... electronic gold? Mehhh getting off topic. Yes-- I have found something GREAT on the world wide web! If you've read my profile you'd see that I'm a huge fan of Peter Gabriel, notably that song 'Sledgehammer.' Its like my theme song; no matter what I can't get tired of it. I listened to Peter Gabriel growing up; a possible reason why I like his stuff so much. However, returing to some of the other stuff I listened to when I was little just doesn't do it for me anymore; I've out-grown it. Yet I find Gabriel the very mold or the pinnacle of any new song I listen to. He's what I use it to judge songs- if it doesn't meet the level of subsistence that some of Mr. Gabriel's music falls into; thats it for me.

Some people are born and it seems as if they're meant to do something with their life- Peter Gabriel was born to make music. There is a story where he's in a recording booth in the middle of a take, and the recording guys noticed that song he was singing had suddenly taken on a dreamy, esoterical sound. Gabriel had fallen asleep while singing the song. Wow.

When you listen to the lyrics, they're often cryptic, and yet profound. They create a feeling of wonder and encompassment- as if he's talking about something much bigger than life; something thats just out of your understanding. But there there is always such hope is his music; I think he wants the best for people. There is such truth and honesty to his work, and that is beautiful.

With this all said, yes, 'Sledgehammer' is my all time favorite. I know it doesn't have the big-time lyrics I was just referring to, but they're still thoughtful and the song itself has a marvelous beat- I just can't get tired of it. I've recently graduated from high school, and my wonderful sister Claire went and got me PLAY, a compilation of his music videos-- she knows me well. Now up until that point I had always listened to his music, and had never really looked up pictures of him. I left that to the imagination; the song itself was more important than the singer. Neither have I learned much about his personal life- scared I might find something I don't like.

But watching the videos I was kind of surprised. I had always imagined him as a sort of wise and grander figure; the apotheosis of an artist, of a creator. But watching the video I had quite a laugh and a half- he's human after all. And when he smiles- what a sweet smile. He strikes me as being so honest and human. He's not going to start working out to be big and bulky for the media; get himself shot six times and grow a mullet. He's himself always- and that is rare in the world.

Anyway what a surprise it was when I found TWO of my favorite videos of his circling around the net. Here are 'Sledgehammer' and 'Steam.' They're both very much alike in theme, and they're both fun songs; so don't go analyzing the. They're both great and fun to watch- be sure t'tell me if they don't work, please. If they do-- enjoy!

Steam
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NWVNmqc2mg
Sledgehammer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaPYQysTHtA&mode=related&search=

I am standing up at the water's edge in my dream
I cannot make a single sound as you scream
it can't be that cold, the ground is still warm to touch
this place is so quiet, sensing that storm...

-'Red Rain,' Peter Gabriel

The Silent Shouter on the Hill

2006-08-18T11:56:00.000-07:00

I've been put on some heavy painkillers for my jaw, but I don't like them that much- they make me dream funny dreams. I haven't had a nightmare since I was ten.

In this dream I was at my fathers house in foggy cold Newfoundland. The two of us were digging sommat up on the wharf, and began getting to the black layers of the wet, cold sand.

At the same time we were conversing about something, my sister Claire called me back to the house. "I'll be right back" and then I took off, cutting through the front yard of the neighbor thats on our houses leftside- one of those types that kills everything in the lawn except the grass itself just so it looks right green. An 'irradiated' lawn, if you will- probably would've killed me if he saw me on it. Anyway, It was dark there, and inbetween the trees were a bunch of crows.

Now I have to say, whenever I heard of people saying crows were death omens and devil servantz or evil spirits I never believed it and met the opinion with a certain distain- they're just animals like you and me, trying to get by. Born, and try to do their best to survive. But I was scared of these ones. Just terrified; everything people in movies do to emphasize what makes them scary that never had an affect on me affected me than. They were all black and oily wet, with bubbles coming out of their skin and their eyes were huge bloated up black marbles; but in my dream I was thinking "People! People eyezzzz!!!"

Anyway I got into the house (I don't think they were trying to hurt me) and helped Claire with what she needed- we began moving this huge old dusty rolled up carpet to the back of the
truck. I think now she was going to pawn it for something; I forget. Than I ran back down to the harbour to my father, and he was kneeling down by the hole, clutched over with his back to me. I knew he wasn't hurt (its the way it is in dreams, isn't it?) and I walked over to his side. In your hands, cradled like a newborn baby, was a living red lobster, with the face of a this geriatric in it. Then the whole dream cut to under the sheets of my bed and there were one or two of them, and I think they were going to eat me- that when woke; I woke with a start. I haven't woken from a start in years-- stupid painkillers!

I will call you Nightmare.

2006-08-18T11:13:00.000-07:00

I've recently returned home from the hospital; I needed jaw surgery. Me of all people! Young, strong and firm-buttocked; I never thought that I'd ever need to go under the knife.

But there I was, warning the anesthesiologist that I'm a light sleeper, and to give me a good dose of the ether or whatever it is they use before the op.

A funny note about the anesthesiologist; she was from Russia and had a really thick accent. When she came up to me she said 'Hallo, I am Anja of anesthesiology,' to which I replied 'Oh really? I was born in Newfoundland myself.'

Anyway, I didn't wake up during surgery, something I'm eternally grateful for. Waking up post-surgery was hell. I think she did grant my request and injected me with twice the amount of dope needed-- I was a right mess for about a day or two afterwards.

I'd like to say the whole thing was a growing experiance, but I can't-- its left me wary of hospitals, as there is something more lonely than a hospital room. I think it was a shrinking experiance, really. In fact, if I ever do something bad and get sent to hell for it, my eternal punishment would be spent in a hospital bed at night, too sick to leave my room, completed with 'Married... with Children' playing on a tiny TV in the background.

But at least its all over with! Though they wired my jaws shut, and I can't eat solids (my favs) I'm getting them off in two weeks, so all is good. Huzzah!

The VERY last samurai?

2006-08-18T10:10:00.000-07:00

Last night I saw The Last Samurai, starring everyones favorite wombat, Tom Cruise. The movie was INCREDIBLY slow starting, but it did pick up considerably when Cruise's character was kidnapped by the Japanese. The movie probably creates this slow-moving, trite feeling when Cruise is in the Western parts of the world on purpose, to make the Japanese samurai world more wholesome and pure.

Y'know, even though Tom Cruise is obviously going through something (and has been for 30-odd years) he is STILL a good actor. The relationship between he and Ken Wantanabe are worth watching the film; but I'd still only rank the film with 65% or so-- it was just okay, not great.

Had a strange dream the other night.

2006-08-17T21:48:00.000-07:00

Ever see that movie "A Room With a View"? I drempt I was a major player in that movie, and it was winter and we were all staying at a hotel, for a funeral. Someone had died-- someone with an upperclass sort of life. I myself was a direct relative of the deceased, but not actually knowing the person prevented me from being hurt over the loss.

I remained separate from the rest of the going-ons until I met an eccentric that greatly resembled Bill Nighy. He was not being boring or stupid like most eccentrics are but still handled every situation with civility and grace; he somehow became my friend and mentor.

The night that we had to drive up and bury the corpse, there were others in the car with me and I realized my friend and mentor was dying. He was able to make me laugh and I don't think I was near him when he died, but he introduced me to a kind of music that was simply beautiful. The thing is, I had heard the music before in the waking world and didn't think much of it; I think my imagination or the power of dreaming made it better somehow.

And there you go! A dream which visited me whilst sleeping-- what d'you think?