I learned two wonderful words this week. They are veridical and
entelechy.

Veridical (vuh-RID-i-kuhl) adjective
1. Truthful
2. Real; corresponding to facts; representing reality

Entelechy (en-TEL-uh-kee) noun
1. Perfect realization as opposed to a potentiality
2. In some philosophies, a vital force that propels one to self-fulfillment

The latter is something along the lines of my second- and third-favourite
words Inchoate and Inertia. They are words to describe an intangible state.
Everything you want to say in the moment before you say it.

I want so much to write about the weekend, but I'm afraid this isn't that kind of blog. I used to have a blog which once promised, among other things, 30% more public bashing (than other blogs? Than previous blog entries? I didn't know). Usually what this amounted to were frequent links to a certain twit's blog (I don't do that anymore; it's more annoying than it's worth) and weak excuses to mock this guy.

Needless to say, founding a blog on a No Moping principle is some little Shmuck's safety net. If it wasn't for the Principle of No Moping (hereafter referred to as B's Principle, because it makes me sound like a scientist or great thinker*), you'd all be reading an entry about dinner with my freshly-exed ex. Seriously, Stumblers, you don't know how good you have it.

Instead of all that, I have two (2! II! deux!) bat-related stories, both equally tragic and terrifying:

Story the first:
I was at the ROM last weekend. It was great. I hadn't been there in years. What I was most excited for was the Bat Cave, a simulated bat-experience much more fun than the real one I was in once (both caves, in equal part, inspired this blog). But the bat cave was closed for construction, and now that the ROM has all these huge renovations planned the Bat Cave would have to be broken down (something to do with walls and moving them). My date was surprised, but I was shocked. Shocked! I wasn't ready to let go of it.

Story the second:
Graham, a friend who likes the ROM's Bat Cave equally, was sweeping an abandoned warehouse (for money!) when he heard a squeaking sound. It was an injured bat stuck in the broom he was using. Broken wings. He picked it up with a stick and perched it in a tree and left it there, not wanting to kill or trash or leave it. Later we wondered if the bat was dead. It probably is by now. You never forget the first time you see a real bat.

Note:
*a scientist or great thinker: Sometimes when I want to feel smart I just yell, "science!" It works.

If a man sets himself on fire outside the White House, and screams "Allah! Allah!", and the Secret Service puts him out and sends him to the hospital immediately, has he even made a statement yet?

Christ, people. The standard protocol for setting oneself aflame in the service of--or in vague, general reference to--a statement or deity is to fucking make sure your point is clear before you do it. He's not dead. He's in the hospital with second- and third-degree burns on 30 percent of his body.

Mr. Not-On-Fire, if you were dead, all we could say about your suicide is that you were shouting Allah and dying. What then would you have left for us to think of you and what you stand for? Eh?

Ok, twice a day and every day this week I've been seeing the same woman on the street. At about 8:30 in the morning and 5:10 in the afternoon she's walking on York Mills with her seeing-eye dog*, and she always looks like she's in a bit of trouble with it. Thing is, seeing-eye dogs are usually very focused. They're unflappable. They don't stop to eat things off the sidewalk or bark at people or running off to chase squirrels. Every time I see this dog, it is clearly not acting in its owner's best interests.

I told someone about this and she said, "well it can't be easy for the poor dog!" It's a seeing-eye dog's job to see for the person who walks it! Am I the only person who thinks that a) this dog should be better trained, or that b) this woman just went out and bought a black lab, thinking the ability to see for two is somehow innate?

Notes:
* seeing-eye dog: The proper nomenclature for the differently-abled and the visually impaired changes as often as my bra size, but does it affect what we call seeing-eye dogs? They're also called guide dogs, but that's a bit misleading (I think of guide dogs barking out facts about Ionic versus Hellenistic style columns in a museum somewhere). Is there a right term and a wrong term?

Sometimes you hang out with exes and it's SHARDS OF BROKEN GLASS. And other times you meet up and three things make perfect sense:

1) Why you liked them
2) Why you were good together
3) Why it's better to be friends

It was last night out that made me decide to RSVP yes to my freshly-exed ex's birthday dinner. Birthday dinner with him and his closest friends isn't about drama, it isn't about me, and it isn't even about the us-thing. It's just good sense for someone I used to be in love with to think I'm going to come through for him.

While I'm on the subject of birthdays, Happy Birthday Tomorrow to Adrienne. You the sweetest pepper in the patch.

I knew this photo from House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, in which the fictional photojournalist Will Navidson slowly goes mad in a house larger on the inside than the outside. Part of his suffering is he took this photograph but spent the time that would have saved her on setting up the shot for which he eventually became famous. "I miss the man I thought I was before I met her[,] the man who would have saved her," he writes. The real photographer, Kevin Carter, took it in Sudan for Life Magazine in 1993 and killed himself in 1994. His wrote in his suicide note, "I'm really, really sorry. The pain of life overrides joy to the point that joy does not exist."

I like this copy of the photo Despair because of the fold-line down the middle. Whoever clipped this from Life had to have folded it and carried it for some time before being able to deal with it.