Just when I start to think that my country is getting too lame even for its elderly, the dowdy Library and Archives Canada unearths Tales From the Vault: Canadian Pulp Fiction 1940-1952. How bloody cool is that? It's even in English and French--because they care.*

Note:
*because they care: As part of my ongoing eleven-year-old attempts to irritate the French-speaking of the world (see whatever post I used to explain why you should call it Prance), I've been maintaining that the only reason Canada is bilingual is because it cares. For similar reasons, airplanes only serve pretzels now because Journey's Steve Perry is allergic to peanuts and is too humble for a private jet.

By John Donne: my favourite of the seventeenth-century poets.*

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning**

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say
The breath goes now, and some say, No;

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity of our love.

Moving of th'earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.

But we, by a love so much refined
That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet***
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th'other do.****

And though it in the center sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th'other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.****

Notes:
*my favourite of the seventeenth-century poets: I know. It sounds so portentious I had to write it like that. He's the only one of the seventeenth-century men I know but I like to think they were all poets together in an old-timey strip club.

**Forbidding Mourning: It's not proven yet (and after almost 400 years we're no closer to knowing), but he most likely wrote this for his wife on his trip to the Continent in 1611. While on that trip he envisioned his wife holding a dead baby and, unbeknownst to him, his wife had had a stillborn child.

***Though I must go, endure not yet: He's got a talent for tragic writing this way; he uses short syllables so we have to read slowly.

****As stiff twin compasses are two . . . To move, but doth, if th'other do: A lone image in poetry. Donne was pretty good with his imagery: lovers' eyeballs threaded on a string; love as a battering ram; a flea his favourite metaphor for fucking.

I like to steal links from other people's blogs, and in today's case, Vicki's. As commercials go, I couldn't watch this one more than twice. However it's worth posting for hilarity's sake.

Today I'll be returning to my college to give a talk about careers and book publishing and giving a care. Am I that old already? Look, I'm wearing my suit. Holy goddamn, I got old.

Tonight, however, I buy me tickets for Shout Out Louds!. I wrote to them once too. This was to tell them that at their last show in Toronto I touched the drummer's bum, and though maybe he didn't notice, it felt very good anyway.

Fan mail works!

Dear Michael Crummey,

I love your work very much. Please invite me out and tell me three jokes. In return I'll buy you a soda.

michelle

p.s. I put thought into this email. Please write back.

***************

michelle,

thanks for the fan mail. glad you like the writing.

afraid I don't even KNOW three jokes. or drink soda.

hope that isn't too disappointing.

mc

***************

On finding oneself on the frontpage advertising for Toronto's gay scene magazine:

Slightly alarming, until I remembered that the photos were legitimate, and that I had spent the entire day totally clothed for my $100. That's right: totally clothed. That's me there, second from the left.

On the use of roman numerals to impress higher-ups:

The phrase, "someone ordered 39 boxes, which in roman numerals is XXXIX boxes!" should be used gingerly, and only when the number comes as good news. Not, for example, "your cat's dead, and it got dragged behind my car for 8 blocks, which is only VIII blocks if you think about it."

On the CBC lockout:

Please, for the love of god, I need my CBC back. I need my Metro Morning, and my Andy Barrie, and my Beyond Burgers and my and my and my. If anyone's in Toronto and free on Wednesday night they might consider coming to the End the CBC Lockout Party. I will be attending with my mom. That's right! You can all meet the most kickass (and elusive!) Wendy B!

On going swing dancing with a young, Jewish, neoconservative opera singer:

Why do I do these things to myself? Dum-dum dum dum dum and Lundy Hop! Although it is very nice to look at a whole ballroom of people dancing the same dance to a live swing band. Who wants to come out on Saturday?

This week, my two words of the week were remarkable and prohibitive. I used them more than any others.

To my delight the A Word A Day emails this week were themed on words describing different groups of animals. A bevy of larks and a skein of birds in flight who land are ambushed by a skulk of foxes while a sounder of wild boar look on.

Lots and lots and lots to report. I fall asleep every night with my window open and wake up to what I assume are the raccoons. They shriek and grunt and snort as they burrow their noses in the lawn, hunting for grubs. I haven’t actually seen said raccoons making these noises, but this is, for all intents and purposes, the burbs; it's either raccoons or skunks. We see rabbits occasionally, and deer when there's symbolism afoot, but they don't shriek. Not like this.

This isn't the first time this has happened. Next time I wake up to this, I'm going to lift my sleepy body up by 90 degrees and look out the window. I have no retaliation planned except a phone call to the local humane Annoying Animal Get-Rid-Of-Place.


Here's another photo of Newfoundland's (and my!) own heartthrob Michael Crummey!

An interesting week.

Your hostess has spent most of it in various states of debilitating pain* and in various states of stoned on either oxycontin a.k.a. hillbilly heroin** or muscle relaxers shaped like little home plates***. It has also been very sunny out.

Notes:
*various states of debilitating pain: Once in a while, when I reveal to someone that I have been in quite literal chronic pain for the last 11 years or so, I am told that you wouldn't know it from talking to me. I also sometimes get this reaction like a hybrid of resentment/anger and I will admit this is in some cases justified. Hell, everyone has their pain and there's no need for me to be all emo about it. Anyways, I'd like to think that no one should be in constant pain, and I'd be as upset about it if it was your back, Bruce Willis.

**various states of stoned on oxycontin a.k.a. hillbilly heroin: I still have these from when I got my wisdom teeth out. Thing is, no one told me these were Mighty Painkillers--mighty insofar as I have experienced pain drugs. This fun little secret was kept from me because oxycontin is a loopily-narcotic prescription that my straightedge parents had to give me or else I'd bleed when I talked. (Really though, has anyone's parent ever said, "Junior it's not all bad. This the doctor gives you will make you see even more colours!") Mouth-healed and minus four teeth, I saved them for times like these when the pain really feels like there's an army of hamsters marching in kleats across bare muscle and bone. 20 pills remained after I recovered from my teeth; in the four years since I've used 14. That's a legitimate rate.

***muscle relaxers shaped like little home plates: Go Team Muscle Relaxers! They don't make me do or say any funny things though; they make me fall asleep immediately so my back can learn to love again.

An irreverent Friday post concerning my ass. (But not concerning to my ass.)

It hurts. Yesterday at the gym I was doing some ass exercises on the seated leg press and I was like, "I'ma do 60 reps lifting my entire body weight!"

I also made the mistake of wearing heels today. Heels look hot because they make butts rise and sort of--pop! And who knew that an ass that goes pop! hurts extra-bad the day after it's done 60 reps of full body weight on a seated leg press?

This is the Y, by the way, the unsexiest, least stylish gym in Toronto. I love it. There was a girl there yesterday who couldn't have been more than 15 who was dressed so skanky, wasn't even exercising, and was totally showing off her pubes, lying down on the gym mats in the stretching room and reading magazines, checking herself out, showing off her pubes. People who come to the Y to be seen are so damn funny.

Also concerning: Michael Crummey

I have very big crush on author Michael Crummey. I hope he invites me to Newfoundland to tell me jokes. I'm about to send my 4th piece of fan mail ever (to the email address I hope to be correct) asking him to do so. Who wouldn't want to get a letter from a stranger saying, "I will buy you unlimited hooch if you tell me some jokes"?

Here's a photo. Ladies, he's mine. Unless he has a wife or something.