Time To Quit

I guess that Bizarro© cartoon I placed on this morning’s Splash du Jour© has gotten me thinking about it.
Smoking, I mean.
It’s been a real long time since I have had a cigarette.
Over 22 years.
In fact, my last cigarette was inhaled on November 26th, 1984.
For some reason I had slept on the couch that night, and when I awoke the next morning I reached for a cigarette, but I was all out.
And I instantly said to myself, “I’m not buying any more.”
Admittedly, the night before, when I had noticed that I was down to my last ciggy, I said to myself, “Time to quit.” I verbalized a resolution there. But I had no idea I would follow through so determinedly.
That afternoon [the 27th of November] I went to Smitty’s© Restaurant with a friend. A smoker. Was I tempted to light up?
Strangely, not.
And then, when my friend Gord arrived a bit later [Smitty’s was our hangout], he sat at the table next to me, an eye-high partition between us.
Soon, he looked over and asked me for a cigarette, and I told him I had quit.
He laughed.

And then he got up from his seat, went to the vending machine, and purchased a pack.
That he may tempt me, thereby. Test my mettle!
Back at his table, he took one out of his freshly unwrapped pack and tossed it to me, over the wall.
I will never forget how that cigarette rolled, oh so delightfully across my own table, as though nudged along by Satan himself! At the time I would not have been surprised if that cigarette, fueled as it was by Gord’s well-intentioned yet cancerous desires to kill me, would have rolled its way right up my chest and into my mouth, somehow igniting itself along the way!
But I picked it up before it could do any of that, and reaching over the partition, handed it back to Gord, and said, “Thanks. But, I quit!”

And I have not had one since.
Somehow, I have survived.
My story of quitting so “cold turkeyish” is unusual [uncommon], I know.
I had tried to quit several times [every New Year?] for many many New Years, and could never follow through. Could never do it.
Somehow this time, something clicked.

Dear Hopelessly-Addicted Puddle-Reader, if you smoke, I don’t want to lay a heavy on you, but I do want to encourage you.
Please quit!
Just try it. Try quitting. One more time.

In January of 2007, I flew to Mexico.
Not one person smoked a cigarette during that long flight, from frigidly cold Ottawa to beautifully warm Puerto Vallarta. Of course, smoking’s not allowed!
However, when we landed, HAI CARAMBA!
It was like a small brush fire around the tour buses waiting to take us to our respective resorts. I had to go back INTO the airport terminal for some fresh air!
EVERYONE was smoking outside. Like walking chimneys!
And I remember thinking, “How did you people survive that flight? Shouldn’t it be at least some sort of sign, telling you that you can actually live without filling yourself up with smoke?”

I am well aware that nicotine is powerful. It’s a powerful drug.
But maybe if you could just imagine that you are on a really long airplane ride?
Would that help?
No?
OK, how about this one…. Imagine that you are on a really long airplane ride, and that if you continue to not smoke when it lands, you will SAVE A LOT OF MONEY, and BE MORE HEALTHY and also LIVE WAY LONGER?
Ahhh…. but I said I would not be heavy…..!

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

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Have a great Tuesday!
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Splash du Jour: Monday

My mother was a high school English teacher, and when I was a kid she used to tear apart my compositions with scissors and a glue pot. That made me into a ruthless self-editor. When I came to the New Yorker, I was determined to have the cleanest Gould galleys of any writer, and I did. Miss Gould was my mother.
-- Judith Thurmann –

Have a great Monday!

The Pesthouse

I will skip all introductory preamble and move straight on to several opinionated statements → The Pesthouse, by Jim Crace, is an absolutely superb novel. Best I’ve read in a long time!
I loved it. I savoured, yet devoured it.
I didn’t want it to end, yet raced my way to its last page and I must conclude that anyone who thinks it worthy of less than five stars out of five is no friend of mine!
There. With that out of the way…

In this, the first novel by Crace I have ever read, post-apocalyptic America has been so long destroyed by some sort of un-named ecological disaster that the surviving population has reverted to a frontier, pioneering manner of life.
Gone [and seemingly long-forgotten] is the age [our own] of automation and electricity. No cars or planes, no big buildings or mass communication.
It is an America in shut-down mode, where a donkey is an extravagance.
It is an inversion of the American Dream, a reversal of Manifest Destiny, and nearly a return to the Dark Ages.
However, civilization’s demise is not global, or so the inhabitants of Crace’s America [and we readers] are led to believe. Legend has it that across the sea, in Europe, things are not so bad. Whatever has happened to America has not happened there. Europe is the new Promised Land, and hopeful Americans become pilgrims, making their way east where they believe they will board ships that will ferry them to their prosperous future.

Toward this utopia, the Lopez brothers, Franklin and Jackson, are making their way.
At a crucial point just outside Ferrytown, Franklin cannot go on, due to his bum knee. [Man, I could really relate to this guy, having a rickety knee myself!]
Low on supplies, Jackson heads into Ferrytown to work in exchange for food, leaving Franklin to rest on a hillside, and vowing to return.
But Jackson does not return. In the middle of the night, a landslide causes displaced gases from the lake to envelop the town, killing all the inhabitants, including Jackson.
Don’t let the first line of the book fool you [as it did, me]. “Everybody died at night,” does not refer to the overall end-of-the-world state of things. It refers merely to this one isolated tragedy, which serves, among other things, as a catalyst for Franklin’s meeting with Margaret.

Ahh, red-haired Margaret.
She has been abandoned by her family at the top of Franklin’s hill, in a hut known as the pesthouse.
It is a somber cabin where victims of the flux, a terrible disease, are left to die. Margaret is there, languishing.
Because Jackson does not return as promised, Franklin seeks shelter in the pesthouse, and a friendship is now born which will endure the length of the novel, and beyond.
Together they set out, their mutual ailments abating, toward the east.
But what a journey awaits them! This will not be your average Boy Scout hike!
The bulk of the novel is the chronicle of their journey, wherein they encounter peril after peril, and mutual pilgrims all along the way. Folks helpful, and folks not so helpful.
And bandits aplenty, none of which are helpful!

Quite suddenly, Margaret and Franklin are separated, and Crace chooses to follow Margaret’s continued quest, which is now no longer involved with merely reaching the ocean, but with a desired reunion.
She wants to find and/or rescue her Franklin. She becomes, for me as a reader, a very convincing heroine, someone I grew to love and admire for her courage and determination, and dang-it-all red-haired feistiness!
What a holy terror she is, at times!
And one of the main reasons is because, along the way, Margaret has become a mother to a child.
No, it is not what you think. The child is unintentionally adopted, along the way. Margaret is fighting not only for her own freedom and survival but also for her child, which she renames Jackie, in memory of Jackson.
Don’t mess with a mother!
The mother’s going to win.
The mother is going to get what is needed.

This was one of the most rollicking, gut-searing, adventurous, well-paced, un-put-downable, well-written, ending-redeeming, simultaneously scenically stark and beautiful novels I have ever read. Really, I loved it that much.
I agree with the Globe and Mail reviewer Joan Thomas, who called Crace’s style “just one draft away from blank verse.”
It is truly poetic. Mythic, even.

Some may find it an authorial inconsistency that towards the end, the travelers [now making their way west] encounter a landscape with “fewer dangers, warmer nights, softer going in a season that was opening up rather than closing down. It even decorated the way with early flowers.”
Early flowers?
What happened to the toxic soil and the barrenness and the despair?
It is overcome, in this novel, by the persistence of life and survival.
No inconsistency at all.
In the end, Franklin and Margaret are called upon to make some truly brave decisions, on behalf of the purest kind of love for one another.
And they do.
There are always flowers, somewhere.

To purchase this book, and you should do so right now, click HERE!
You can read an excerpt, HERE!

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

Splash du Jour: Friday

There are a whole bunch of books about Hillary Clinton. According to a biography of Hillary by Carl Bernstein… Bill Clinton planned to divorce Hillary.
And when asked why she stayed married, Hillary was quoted as saying, “There are worse things than infidelity.”
To which Bill Clinton said, “Yeah. Fidelity.”
-- Jay Leno --

Have a great Friday!

Blindness: The Movie

OK, hold thy horses!
It’s kind of sketchy right now, I am searching frantically for information on this, but alas, all I have to go on is an article in the paper.
The web is very scarce on the subject.
But earlier today I was in the lunchroom at work, eating one of those individual size things of yoghurt and flipping through the papers strewn about at random, when what caught my eye but Blindness!
The word…. and alongside it, “Nobel Prize-winning novel”… and above this, a headline → Ruffalo, Moore Tapped for Canadian Film.
I nearly swallowed my dentures.
And I don’t even HAVE dentures!

So, here is the scoop.
One of my favorite novels of all time is going to be coming to a theater near me and you, soon!
In the spring of 2008, apparently.
It is in production, as we blog-speak!
Here…. I will tell you what I know.

Apparently, production of the film starts the end of July, in Toronto. Then moves to Uruguay, in September.
Some of the stars will be Mark Ruffalo as the doctor, suddenly struck blind.
None other than Julianne Moore → [and Cip said… “meooooow!”] will play the role of the doctor’s wife, one of the few that does not go blind.
Danny Glover will play the man with the eye patch.
The movie will be directed by Fernando Meirelles, whose previous work includes such things as The Constant Gardener [2005], and City of God [2002].

Oh my God, it is all too good to be true!
When the reclusive author, Jose Saramago, was originally approached by several hopeful filmmakers, they were “firmly rebuffed.”
But finally, in 1999, these two guys, Somebody McKellar and Somebody Fichman, “hopped a plane to the writer’s home in the Canary Islands, where they persuaded him to sign off on a deal.”
Wow!

Instead of my blabbing, you can read the same article I saw in The Globe and Mail, by clicking HERE!

I will be one of the first in line, to see this film.
I may even wear real dark glasses and carry a walking stick, and be led into the theater by my alcoholic Seeing-Eye Cat, Jack!

“You know, that’s not even all that funny, Dad.”

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

Splash du Jour: Thursday

Scooter Libby, former aide to Vice President Cheney, was sentenced to 30 months in prison. Afterwards, Scooter said, “I just hope I have the chance to clear my incredibly stupid name.”
-- Conan O’Brien –

Have a great Thursday!

How Do They Do It?

Hey, just a world to all my girlfrien's in blogland!
Have you ever wondered how some of these covergirls, like Keira [above], can be as flawlessly beautiful-ish as they are?
Well, HAH!
Truth is, they aren't!

I mean, look at that photo there.
She is, among other things, WAY better looking than me!
How does she do it?
She doesn't.
Her photographer does.
CHECK THIS OUT!

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Splash du Jour: Wednesday

“Paris Hilton has been in jail for three days. They’re already making a movie about Paris Hilton being in jail. I believe they’re calling it The Bird Brain of Alcatraz.”
-- David Letterman –

Have a great Wednesday!

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

She’s got a great sense of humour about herself. When she found out that the one group of potential voters who really hated her were white, middle-class men of property, she wondered, ‘What on Earth have I done to them.’
And then she worked it out. ‘Apparently,’ she said, ‘I remind them of their first wife.’
-- Gore Vidal, on Hillary Clinton –

Have a great Tuesday!

An Ominous Warning

I just got quite the wake-up call!
For those of you familiar with my after-work habits, you will know that I tend to hang out at the Chapters bookstore and read and drink coffee in the Starbucks area!
I don’t do this ALWAYS per se, like I mean….
OK, who am I kidding?
I practically live here.
I’m here right now, writing this.
At a Chapters store. I can’t help it. I love books and I love Starbucks.
Plus, my apartment [don’t tell Jack I said this]…. but it’s sort of a bit boring if I sit there for too long.
So I’m here at Chapters for an average of seven days a week, and sometimes more!
And because I am here so much I get comfortable. Begin to think that everyone else, all these anonymous people walking around are just part of the family! To be trusted.
Decent. We’re all brothers and sisters.

Often I walk around, and leave my Mac laptop sitting at the table in Starbucks.
How stupid is this? Like seriously, from one to ten, how stupid?
I know. Eleven! Right?
But I do it, because I am convinced that everyone out there is as decent as I am.

So this evening I am reading a fabulous book by Jim Crace, his new one, The Pesthouse. And I thought I would walk over to the “C” aisle, about half a mile away, and browse some of his other works.
Hmmm…. his stuff looks interesting.
I returned to my table and sat down.
In one of the sofa-type chairs, a vivacious woman turns around and looks at me.
[Hmmm… her stuff looks interesting, too!]
“Excuse me,” she says, “I just wanted to say something.”

I'm all ears.

She goes on, “Just last week, my brother got his laptop computer stolen from this very spot.”
“No,” I gasped, my eyes like saucers.
“Yeah, he did. Right over there,” she points. “And he only had gotten up to walk away for a minute or two, not nearly as long as you just did.”

“Oh my GOD, I would DIE if someone took this computer here…” I said.
“Well, I just thought I’d let you know. Really, you should not leave it there at the table like you just did.”

“Well, thank you for the advice. I am in here so often that I guess I just get a bit too trusting. It’s so easy to lose sight of the fact that not everyone is as nice and totally decent of a person as I am, myself. I forget that not everyone is an educated, intellectually stimulating single, bachelor guy with tons of money….. [she started to gather her stuff up, around her] ….. that has a penthouse apartment overlooking the city, where he tirelessly cares for his alcoholic cat and… and….”

She was gone.

Actually I am just kidding about that last part, [like I didn’t mention anything about Jack’s drinking problem]…. but the rest is totally true!
So, thank you for reminding me, Mystery Woman.
I must be more vigilant about leaving the Mac unattended!
Haven’t I blogged about this kind of topic, before?

And, if you don’t believe me, about Jack, check this out.

***********

Splash du Jour: Monday

I would imagine that if you could understand Morse code, a tap dancer would drive you crazy.
-- Mitch Hedberg –

Have a great Monday!

Roger Waters: The Concert

On Wednesday night I was at the Roger Waters concert.
I loved it.
And I knew I would.
I saw the same show in Montreal, last September.
The above image is of the stage, taken without zoom, from my seat.
I guess it is safe to say that my favorite music of all time is…. anything Pink Floydian, and Roger Waters is my favorite portion of the Pink Floyd phenomenon. I love David Gilmour also. It’s just that I love Waters more!

← Here is probably the best photo of Roger, that I got. [Have any of you ever noticed how incredibly difficult it is to get a good concert photo from far away?]

Well, the show was superb!
The set list was as follows.
The show opened with In The Flesh, as did Waters’ last tour, of the same name.
And why not? It is the perfect opener, beginning and ending with thundering crescendos.
Then, an immediate “toning it down a notch” ← as Chris Farley might say, with the beautiful song Mother, the solo part taken by the lovely Katie Kissoon. [shown below].


She pegged this. Her voice is incredibly clear and strong. I had shivers.
Then, they turned back the clock a ways for Set The Controls For The Heart of The Sun. In this piece, Ian Ritchie stepped forward to showcase some of the best saxophone work I have ever heard this side of, well… the sun!

Song #4 was the legendary Shine On You Crazy Diamond.
Need I even comment? It was wonderful, and followed by Have A Cigar.
Then the crowd went wild with those first few distinctive-as-hell acoustic notes of Wish You Were Here.
What an amazing song, played note-perfect.
Another toning down a notch [Waters understands dynamics better than anyone] with Southampton Dock.
“Maggie what have you done?” All that jazz. Great tune.
Followed by Fletcher Memorial Home.
Then, one of the highlights of the night, and my personal favorite songs, an exclusive Waters’ number [distinct from the collective Pink Floyd]…. his song Perfect Sense, the start of which had a gi-normous NASA spaceman fly around the stadium in a simulated space-walk. Truly incredible. A shot of the spaceman, below.


But then, perhaps the low point, and definitely not a very good song, overall…. the politically over-charged Leaving Beirut.
I did not like this song in Montreal, nor here, in Ottawa.
I find it unmelodic, and over-lyric-ed!
Positively Trollopian in verbosity. It’s trying to say too much!
There is just not enough room on any one skewer to effectively shishkabob President Bush and Tony Blair and all Christians, and this song attempts to do all of that at once. It was like The Dixie Chicks on acid!
OK, but all of that is immediately redeemed with the first reverberated Roland piano notes surround-sound bleatings of Sheep, the final song of this pre-intermission set.
This is where the Flying Pink Pig now made its flight through the stadium. I loved it. Here a couple shots of Pink-Piggy, below.


I am thinking of writing an entire blog based on one portion of Pig-Graffiti. It says “All Religions Divide.”


After the intermission, the band returned to perform each song, yea, the entire album of Dark Side Of The Moon.
It is a concert experience that cannot be rivalled, in my opinion. There were moments when I was sure my skin actually peeled itself from my body, floated upwards into the rafters, looked down and felt pity for the exposed nakedness of my shivering muscles and sinew, and decided it was best to float on down and re-attach itself to me. [Mind you, there was lot of second hand ganja-smoke in the place by this time, so I may have just been hallucinating]….. suffice it to say…. I saw “God” and he looked like a right triangle, with a prism of light coming out of His Hypotenuse!

What an amazing performance.
Let me mention some highs and lows, which all good hallucinations are duty-bound to have.
Highs: The song Us And Them, with a crazy-as-hell guitar solo from the ever-eccentric, Andy Fairwether-Low. [Shown below, in the background, in cowboy hat!]


He is NUTS!
Also of note, Jon Carin’s wonderful Gilmourian vocals, in this song.

However, a disappointing aspect of this set?
In Great Gig In The Sky, I was a bit disappointed with the vocal-solo portion, perfomed here by Carol Kenyon. It just seemed….. not happening. When I heard her do this, back in September in Montreal, the solo part was much more powerful. At that time, I wept. This time, I sort of… winced.
Granted, who can really succeed in replicating what Clare Torry did in the original song, without actually DYING in the process.
And not only so, but continue to do this night after night? It is truly impossible. In that sense, Carol Kenyon’s “dying sequence” in Great Gig was actually quite good!


When the band left the stage after taking their bow [above]…. the lighters came out in full force. And the screams. I myself haven’t screamed that much since I was a toddler and accidentally shoved a two-pronged hairpin into a power outlet.
They came back on and I tell you, it was quite the finale!
For the encore they began with Another Brick In The Wall, then did a severely pyrotechnic version of Vera and Bring The Boys Back Home.
Then…….. Comfortably Numb.
And by then, I was.
Dave Kilminster, [shown below]…… his guitar solo in this song, well, there is no way that I can describe it.

And he is so unassuming, this Kilminster guy. Looks like he might have poured a cement driveway, or perhaps painted a fence just before the show, and had forgotten to change clothes for the gig. When Snowy White harmonizes with him on the guitar solos in Numb, it is simply unforgettable stuff.

All in all, what I am saying here in this review is completely inadequate in describing how wonderful of an experience it was.

If the Dark Side of The Moon tour comes to your city [tonight it is in Chicago]...
you should just GO!
Go over to the Dark Side!

***********

Splash du Jour: Friday

Have a great Friday!
*********

SENATORS - GAME 5

Ummm... NO COMMENT!
God!
I go to a Roger Waters concert and everything falls apart?
No.
Wait.
One comment.

There are 30 teams in the NHL [National Hockey League].
The Ottawa Senators played in the Stanley Cup FINALS!
Only the best two teams of 2007 get to play in those finals!
OTTAWA HAS NOTHING TO BE ASHAMED OF.

Way to go, guys!
I am proud of you!
-- Cip

*********

Splash du Jour: Thursday

The concert was AMAZING! I loved it!

Not the torturer will scare me, nor the body's final fall, nor the barrels of death's rifles, nor the shadows on the wall, nor the night when to the ground the last dim star of pain is hurled, but the blind indifference of a merciless, unfeeling world.
-- Roger Waters, lyrics to Each Small Candle –

Have a great Thursday!

Tonight's The Night

Well folks, Tonight’s The Night!
And by “Tonight” I mean, I am out the door in a few seconds here!
And by “The Night” I mean… The Night of The Roger Waters Concert!
I am so excited about it. I am positively giddy. Trembling!
Euphoricized!
As the very astute Puddler will recall, the original night for the concert was ousted by the Senators playoff-hockey game. For a terrible while it seemed that there might be no concert at all! [Horrors!]
BUT… then it was re-scheduled.
Instead of Monday the 4th →Wednesday the 6th.
Trading dates with Quebec City!
So, Tonight’s The Night!

In preparation, last night I watched the entire In The Flesh concert DVD for the 548th time!
I won’t say that Roger Waters is my favorite MUSICIAN [per se], but I would definitely say that he is my favorite musician personality!
I like what he does.
He is classy. Classic. A class in himself.
He’s got the best musician’s working with him, tonight.
Jon Carin, Andy Fairwether-Low, Graham Broad, Snowy White, Dave Kilminster, Katie Kissoon, P.P. Arnold, Carol Kenyon, Ian Ritchie.

I am in the latter stages of Profound Trembulation!
Also, in preparation for Tonight, I have been reading a book by John Harris, called The Dark Side Of The Moon, and learning tons of background stuff about the band [Pink Floyd] and the history of the album’s production and phenomenal success.
Tonight’s The Night.
I attended this same concert last September, in Montreal.
Back then, I did not report on it very much.
But Tonight’s The Night.
This time I will tell you all.

I’m out the door….. → → → →

***********

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Eskimo: "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?"
Priest: "No, not if you did not know."
Eskimo: "Then why did you tell me?"
-- Annie Dillard, in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek –

Have a great Wednesday!

An American Childhood

Just looking over at my bookshelves, I spy Pilgrim At Tinker Creek, a book by Annie Dillard. I’ve been meaning to read that book for about 65 years now, and have not done so.
I love how it starts out…
I used to have a cat, an old fighting tom, who would jump through the open window by my bed in the middle of the night and land on my chest.

I like that. I love her fascination with life.
Makes me recall her excellent memoir, An American Childhood, which is where I first met the furiously curious Annie Dillard.

From her very earliest years she has a profound awareness of the mystery of life, nothing is without wonder, everything worthy of further scientific investigation. She has what Abraham Maslow called a "freshness of appreciation" meaning not only that nothing escapes her notice, but also that she tends to find some positive result out of all of her experiences, and I find this to be an enviable trait.

The book, her childhood, takes place in Pittsburgh in the 1950's.
She is afforded much freedom and affluence in her somewhat eccentric and hilarious family [her mother didn't like the taste of stamps, so she didn't lick stamps; she licked the corner of the envelope instead]. Dillard wonderfully paints a picture of a world that is charged with wonder, and gives us a sense that this electrified world is not just hers, but also the world of the reader.
It's true that one has to be patient with Dillard's disconnected vignettes... there are diversions that seem to bust up the chronology of events, but overall, the book is great in that it makes the reader feel that perhaps they too have never lived an insignificant day.

She says: "...it is not you or I that is important, neither what sort we might be nor how we came to be each where we are. What is important is anyone's coming awake and discovering a place, finding in full orbit a spinning globe one can lean over, catch, and jump on. What is important is the moment of opening a life and feeling it touch - with an electric hiss and cry - this speckled mineral sphere, our present world."

She seems to be saying that there is a glory in the mundane.
And I agree with her.
I think there is.

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

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Sheep are evil. They have no eyebrows.
You never know if what you are saying to them is having any effect.
-- Tommy Tiernan –

Have a great Tuesday!

SENATORS: GAME 4

Well, dang nab it, I am having some hockey woes!
No, it’s not just that my team, the Senators are down by a game in this series!
It is a completely unrelated combination of events.
First, I worked real late tonight. Then, when I was finally out of the warehouse, it was RAINING!
Hence, ruining my plans of going down to the Jumbo-Tron to watch the game! [I still don’t own an umbrella!]
Then, I thought that perhaps I would go to a bar and watch the game.
But I hate paying the price of beer in a bar, honestly I do. I am a ROYAL cheapskate about alcohol!
So I figured I will come home and watch the game on TV. And like get drunk here, for cheaper.
But partway home I remembered that my TV is on the fritz. As in, totally not working!
So…. as I write this… I am huddled around the RADIO!

The what?
← Yes, like in the olden days. I feel like some bombed-out Londoner, searching through the static on the wireless for news on the Fuhrer’s latest actions! Who watches hockey on the radio? I guess I do!
So far there is no score, first period is nearly over. I am all tense!

This is sort of fun, in an eerie sort of way. I may make some popcorn!
All day today I have been thinking that it is Spezza’s night to turn on the afterburners and score a goal [or two]. That is Jason Spezza, one of Ottawa’s key players, shown above. He is an erratic player, but when he is on, he’s damn good.
So, my prediction is that he scores 12 goals tonight.
And sends the Ducks squacking all the way back to Californy!

I’ll be back later with a post-game comment!

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

Wow! How about an update already! Daniel Alfredsson [the team Captain] scores in the LAST SECOND of the first period!
Sens are going into the first intermission, leading 1 - 0!
GO SENS GO!

Much later.... it's not looking good.
Only minutes left and Anaheim leading 3 - 2.

2 minutes to go.....

They lost!
This is the game of hockey. Only one team can win!
For those keeping score.... this means that the series is at 3 - 2 in favor of Anaheim, and the Sens are now on the brink of elimination as they travel to Californy for the [most probable] coup de gras on Wednesday!
And for those of you keeping really close track of things here at Bookpuddle, you will recall that tonight was supposed to be the Roger Waters concert, and this game ousted it!
The Waters concert will be on Wednesday the 6th, and I'll be there!

***********

Splash du Jour: Monday

“You’re not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.”
-- Dean Martin –

Have a great Monday!
*********

Theft: A Love Story

Having just finished Peter Carey’s latest novel, Theft, I have mixed feelings.
I liked the book, and simultaneously, found it… difficult.
First off, in the “liking it” department, well… it is Peter Carey!
You don’t win the Booker Prize twice by writing poop even once! He is an incredibly good writer.
I loved his Oscar & Lucinda, and My Life As A Fake.
But this one, Theft. I did not love it, per se. I liked it.
Hand it to Carey though, he trusts his reader! He just didn’t count on the likes of me showing up!
I needed help. Parts of it got away from me, like a lifejacket floating out of reach, and I often had to rely upon my Reading Partner to haul me into the boat, as it were.

Theft is sub-titled “A Love Story” and it is!
The story of Michael Boone, an ex-“really famous” painter, born 1943, in Bacchus Marsh, Australia. [← As was Carey himself, in both time and place. Let the reader interpret!]
Newly divorced and down on his luck, Michael retreats to the unoccupied house of his patron, Jean-Paul, in an effort to here, perhaps re-invent himself.
With him is his near-autistic brother Hugh. Michael takes care of Hugh in lieu of the only other option, which would be abandoning him to an institution.
And so Michael sets out out to work on a series of new paintings.

But into this peaceful backwoods setting, a beautiful woman appears one rainy night, her car stuck in the mud.
28-year old Marlene Cook is not only vivacious, but also an art expert.
Michael soon discovers she's married to the son of the now-deceased 20th-century artist, Jacques Leibovitz, and is involved in the authentication of Leibovitz’s works.
Michael has been a fan of Leibovitz since his high school years.
Needless to say, his interest in Marlene knows no bounds!
Soon he will wish there were bounds to his interest, as she involves him in a web of thievery and chicanery that threatens all he has ever stood for, in the production of authentic, genuine ART!
Not to mention, he loves her. And she, him, apparently.

Scamming, double-crossing, faking, severe cheatitry.
In many ways, this novel is rip-roaring good. Roller-coastery good!
Funny, too.
In style, Carey is as subversive and non-generic as ever. The narration alternates, chapter by chapter, between Michael and Hugh. Hence, we are given dual perspectives of simultaneous events, and this keeps the reader [if the reader is me] fully engaged and on the edge of their seat. Or the edge of the boat, as it were.
But a few times I fell into the lake.

I got a bit lost in the intricacies of exactly what is done in the art world as presented, regarding counterfeit painting and related forgery activities. I think that Carey is counting on a real savvy reader here.
It’s not the kind of book you read while driving a tractor along a straight furrow. Or while stirring a pot of soup with one hand and changing a diaper with the other.
You’re just not going to get it unless you are paying attention.

Throughout the book this one sentence is, themewise, center-stage:
How do you know how much to pay if you don’t know what it’s worth?
Hmmm…. a good question. As for me, I like to pay nothing!
My own walls are filled with laminated posters I stole from Starbucks, so what do I really know about the higher realms of art?

Because I needed a friend with this book, I suggest it as a Reading Group selection. In the multitude of voices, this book has gemstone potential.
Getting your paws on your own authentic and legally-obtained copy of Theft is as easy as doing THIS!
Or,
READ AN EXCERPT!

Cheers,
Cip

**********

SENATORS - GAME 3

Well, tonight is a big night for Hockey in Ottawa!
In just minutes from now, a very crucial Game 3 against the Anaheim Ducks will be under way!
← Our netminder, Ray Emery, is going to have to be every bit as sharp as he was in the last game. A game which the Senators lost 1 – 0, but in which Ray’s goaltending was superb!
Ottawa’s offense needs to step it up a notch or two.
Or three.
As in, score some goals!
So… I am just about to saunter off down Sussex Street, making my faithful way to the Jumbo-Tron at City Hall to watch tonight’s game along with about 10,000 other rabid fans!
If Ottawa loses this game, well [how does one say it]…. it will be sort of DIRE!
Yes.
Dire!
They will be down 3 games to zip, and the only remaining task will be to begin carving out tombstones!
Tonight... it's do or dire!
But I have faith! Yes, I do!
They have home-ice advantage. 20,000 screaming fans, salivating for a win!
They are in their own barn tonight!
TIME TO DEAL WITH THE DUCK SITUATION ON THE FARM!
I will be back later, with a post-game comment!

Hang on, Ray! You can do this!
**********

THEY WON THE GAME!

It was a lot of fun being amongst so many fans... total excitement.
Every so often the cameras would show an aerial shot of the crowd in front of City Hall and a huge cheer would erupt!
So they did it!
They won the game 5 - 3 and now the series is at 2 - 1 in favor of Anaheim. Next game is Monday evening when I think that I will again go to City Hall, weather permitting.
Well, it was a great game and I am all tired out!
Way to go Sens!

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

RENT: A Poem-Thing

Today, June 1st, marks TEN YEARS of renting this penthouse apartment.
Before this I paid rent elsewhere, assuredly yes, but I am just thinking today of how long ten years is!
Like at this one address.
I mean, it’s damn near a decade!
120 months of robbery by consent!
RENT!
Rent is craziness.
No wonder the word can also mean “torn”… for I have had well over $$ one hundred thousand dollars $$ untimely ripp't from me in the past decade!
Gone, gone, gone!
So, as I sit here at Starbucks© musing upon such things, I compose a few whimsical lines on the subject.
The subject of….

Rent

I dare you to find among things winged or hooved
A more nutty idea, a thing so far removed
From basic common sense. You can’t do it!
Even oxen would would throw off their yoke and eschew it.

Ask the busiest of lads, [I refer to the beaver]
That steady, stick-carrying, over-achiever.
He does what he does for one reason. To own!
When’s he’s done the damn dam the damn dam is his home!

And the chickens and bees, daily robbed of their labours
Know it’s only because they’ve got humans for neighbours.
So it’s not from compliance they continue their striving
But in faith and in hope they keep laying and hiving.

And the horse, does he willingly hitch to the carriage?
To be told who to woo, who be given in mare-age?
No. There’s only one reason he bends to the plow.
It’s the bit in his mouth puts the sweat on his brow.

Surely man’s the dumb beast, and for instance, take me.
Month by month giving money that I’ll never see,
To a landlord unseen. And he makes his own home
With the fortune I’ve traded for what I’ll not own.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2007

Splash du Jour: Friday

The poet Diagoras of Melos was perhaps the most famous atheist of the fifth century. Although he did not write about atheism, anecdotes about his unbelief suggest it was self-confident, almost teasing, and very public.
He revealed the secret rituals of the Eleusinian mystery religion to everyone and “thus made them ordinary,” that is, he purposefully demystified a cherished sacred rite, apparently to provoke his contemporaries into thought.
In another famous story, a friend pointed out an expensive display of votive gifts and said, “You think the gods have no care for man? Why, you can see from all these votive pictures here how many people have escaped the fury of storms at sea by praying to the gods who have brought them safe to harbor.”
To which Diagoras replied, “Yes, indeed, but where are the pictures of all those who suffered shipwreck and perished in the waves?”
A good question.
Diagoras was indicted for profaning the mysteries, but escaped. A search was put out for him throughout the Athenian empire, which indicates that the charges were serious, but he was not found.
-- Excerpt from Doubt: A History, by Jennifer Michael Hecht –

Have a great Friday!

********

Splash du Jour: Thursday

I guess I am still in mourning over
last night's loss by the Senators!
GO SENS GO!

Have a great Thursday!

SENATORS - GAME 2

Well, tonight is a very important night for the Ottawa Senators.
In the last game, Anaheim had their number, and the Sens are now down a game in the series.
1 - 0.
Every Sens fan is out in full-force tonight, the city is wild with anticipation. There are big screens set up all over the downtown core, and I am on my way out to go and take part in the mayhem and revelry.
They've really got to win tonight. There's no two ways about it.
In the world of NHL hockey, to let yourself get into a two-game defecit position in a best-of-seven series.... that's just not good.
That's gonna bruise.
So they've got to do it tonight.
There are no options.
I'll be back later with a post-game comment....

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

Well, there are different forms of Depression... I am currently in the midst of one of the Sports-Induced type.
Curable only by a radical reversal of fortune in subsequent games!
It is sad. Really a disappointment. Ottawa lost the game by a score of 1 - 0.
So now the Anaheim Ducks lead the series 2 - 0.
That is going to be quite the hole to climb out of, pretty much near impossible, really.
Once again, [my opinion] the Ducks outplayed the Senators, from start to finish. If it were not for the superb play of Ottawa's goaltender, Ray Emery, the score would have been miserable.
An insult.
So much for the foie gras, I guess!
Next game is Saturday, here, on home turf. Or ice, rather.
I still have hope!

**********

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A death. What’s that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you’re too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years till you’re young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating… you finish off as an orgasm.
-- George Carlin –

Have a great Wednesday!

Heartened [?]

Just stopping by, briefly, to say that I was heartened [← is that even a word?] today to notice something in the Globe and Mail “Book” section.
Bestsellers in the Non-Fiction chart.
#1 and #2… the current bestsellers in this department [in Canada, at least] are Richard Dawkins’s, The God Delusion, and Christopher Hitchens’s, God Is Not Great, respectively.
The Hitchens one is fairly new, but the Dawkins book has been among the top ten for 30 weeks!
Why am I “heartened”?
BECAUSE!
These are the kind of books we should be reading nowadays.
I’ve written a wee bit about the The God Delusion, and the Hitchens one is something I intend to get my paws on, soon!
Both of these guys are atheists.
Am I an atheist?
No.

But neither am I a traditional “believer”.
I am some sort of proto-heretic non-atheistic post-religion, hydra-headed hybrid BEAST!
I don’t even KNOW what I am, spiritual-wise. But, I have spent a lot of years as a fundamentalist Christian, and so I know what that is.
Whatever it is that I am now, is better.
I like to call myself a “Christian in exile” to borrow a very apropos phrase from one of my favorite avant-garde authors, John Shelby Spong.
Let me tell you something though, when it comes to some of these atheist writers. [Some, not all… one must be selective]. → They are saying relevant stuff about our existence, stuff that should be read and wrestled with, until our hips are out of joint, like Jacob’s was [Genesis 32:22-28].
People like Sam Harris.
Dawkins.
And now, Hitchens.

Here is a conundrum.
And I admit…. it is only my opinion. After all… I am not “God”.
But I do believe that there is one. A “god” I mean.
It’s just that “it” is not the one we learned about, in Sunday school. The “god” that I believe in is the one that Paul Tillich called “the Ground of All Being.”
Impersonal.
It is the god that defies any religion’s description.
Ineffable.
And… strangely enough, I believe that if this “god” could speak to us, “it” would tell us to read these books, written by the very people who say “it” does not exist, to the exclusion of those books written by those who know all there is to know about “it”.
That is why I am heartened.
Because it seems… it seems to me, according to the Globe and Mail charts, that we are perhaps, finally, and at long last, listening.
And reading.

***********

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Your own winning literary style must begin with interesting ideas in your head. Find a subject you care about and which in your heart feel others should care about.
It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.
-- Kurt Vonnegut --

Have a great Tuesday!

SENATORS - GAME 1

GO SENS GO!

Well, I have raced home from work, [even skipping my ritualistic Starbucks time] to go out and watch the senators play Game One of the Stanley Cup finals, against the Anaheim Mighty Ducks.
The above photo is the top line that has to really perform tonight.
Alfredsson, Heatley, and Spezza.

Winning Game One of a Best-of-Seven series is tremendously important [statistically]… and so, I am really hoping that tonight my home team pulls out all the stops and makes fois gras out of these Ducks!
Come on boys, you can do it.
All of Canada [well, except for Leafs fans] is cheering for you!

I will be back later tonight, with my post-game comments…

***********

Post game comments:

Ummm.... that was a heartbreaker.
You know, within the first two minutes Ottawa takes the lead, I'm jumping off the couch, doing a jig... then the Ducks come back with a goal to end the first period in a draw.
Then I ate some lasgagna.
Then Ottawa scores [my beloved Wade Redden... good Saskatchewan boy, and even though he got this goal, it was definitely not his best game ever, he made quite a few defensive-play errors]... so Ottawa is in the lead again.
Third period, Ducks strike again. Now the game is tied at 2.
So I ate some more lasagna, frequently muttering things like "Dammit" and "Hell".
Then [are you listening?] with something like 3 minutes left, Anaheim shovels in another goal and hangs on to win the game 3 - 2.
All in all, I must be fair. The better team won tonight. Ottawa looked rusty after their nine days off the ice. [Since the last series]. Anaheim only had six days off. They came to the arena more prepared, it seemed.
Game 2 is Wednesday.
Now, to sleep. Full of lasagna and anger.
I will surely have nightmares.... probably involving stick-waving Ducks!

***********

Splash du Jour: Monday

Either then or later we kissed, but when it happened it was anticlimactic. It wasn't that the kiss was bad. In many ways, it was a good kiss, even a passionate one. But if we were kissing, then we couldn't talk, and the more we talked the more there was to say.
-- Nicole Kraus, in From The Desk of Daniel Varsky –

Have a great Monday!