July 2006

Lamb

Posted on by Patrick

Lamb, a nov­el by Christo­pher Moore.

The sub­ti­tle on this one is “The Gospel accord­ing to Biff, Christ’s child­hood pal”, so right off you should know if you’re the type that will enjoy this sto­ry, or the kind that maybe should­n’t pick it up. Me, I’m the type that would enjoy this story.

Hav­ing read Moore’s nov­el Coy­ote Blue years ago, I knew that he was fun­ny. Appar­ent­ly I’d for­got­ten how fun­ny. I chor­tled all the way through this book (well, till I got to the last sec­tion, titled “The Passion”).

The sto­ry is large­ly con­cerned with the “miss­ing years” of Christ’s life. Biff (whose real name is Levi bar Alphaeus) and Christ (whose real name is Joshua bar Joseph) grow up togeth­er, fall in love with the same girl (Mary the Mag­da­lene, referred to here as “Mag­gie”), and have all kinds of adven­tures and mis­ad­ven­tures togeth­er. When events con­spire to put Mag­gie beyond their reach for­ev­er, Joshua and Biff sad­dle up and head off to the East, look­ing for the Wise Men that had showed up on the night of Josh’s birth.

They track down Balthasar, Mel­chior, and Gas­par, traips­ing from Israel to Afghanistan, Chi­na, and India in the process, learn­ing kung fu, Zen Bud­dhism, and Hin­du asceti­cism along the way. (Well, Josh learns; Biff is more into the ladies, and he learns quite a few items from them, most­ly relat­ed to the Kama Sutra.)

The sto­ry is packed with laughs, both overt and sly (at one point, Biff says to Josh, as they trav­el toward Dam­as­cus, “Well it’s not just going to come to you in a flash here on the Dam­as­cus road, Josh. That sort of thing does­n’t happen.”

As good as he is at telling the fun­ny stuff, Moore does­n’t flinch when he tells the sad sto­ries; the grim and grue­some parts of the tale are equal­ly well-told. The Pas­sion and the Cru­ci­fix­ion are espe­cial­ly heart-rend­ing when told in the voice of a man forced to watch his clos­est friend die.

When I came to the epi­logue, I found myself wish­ing there was more, much more. I think I’ll have to get some more Christo­pher Moore nov­els into my house.

Thirteen Literary Wonders

Posted on by Patrick

Inspired by Doug’s post on his favourite books, here are thir­teen pieces of text that I read in school. Some I liked, some I didn’t.

    Ones I liked
  1. There were sev­er­al Norse Myths in one of the read­ers that I had in about Grade Five or so. They were there as sort of a com­pare and con­trast with a cou­ple of Greek myths. The only one that I remem­ber for sure being there was the myth of how Loki gave away–and then recovered–Idunn’s gold­en apples. To this day I still love the Norse myths. I think maybe it’s some­thing about Rag­narok that draws me to them, the knowl­edge that some­day, all the gods die.
  2. Mack Reynolds’ short sto­ry Burnt Toast fea­tures an inter­est­ing twist on the “sell your soul to the Dev­il” sto­ry. A man, des­per­ate for mon­ey, is giv­en this chal­lenge by a demon: drink one of thir­teen shots of liquor, one of which is spiked with poi­son. If you get the poi­son, I get your soul. For each drink that you fire back, you get an amount of mon­ey that goes up expo­nen­tial­ly (the first glass is worth $100, the sec­ond $200, the third $400, and so forth). The man accepts the chal­lenge, and keeps com­ing back for more. As the num­ber of shot glass­es dwin­dles, and the amount get high­er, the ten­sion mounts, until there’s only two glass­es left. What comes next? Ask me nice and I might tell you. [edit: Appar­ent­ly this sto­ry was first pub­lished in a 1955 Play­boy. I read it in a read­er at school. Really.]
  3. The only Shake­speare play I’ve ever read, to date, is Mac­beth. It was all right. I watched the blood­less BBC ver­sion of it, and it was not all right. At the end, when Mac­duff holds Mac­beth’s head aloft, it’s got red yarn hang­ing down from it.
  4. I much pre­ferred George Orwell’s Ani­mal Farm to its longer cousin, 1984. Then one day I was in a moun­taineer­ing store in Cal­gary, and there was a dis­play of walk­ing sticks. The ad cam­paign for them made me laugh: “Four legs good, two legs bad”.
  5. I know it sounds cheesy when peo­ple say things like “It real­ly makes you appre­ci­ate what you have”, but for me, the book that this sen­tence applies to is One Day in the Life of Ivan Deniso­vich, by Solzhenitsyn.
  6. In the tenth grade, I read Ray Brad­bury’s Mar­t­ian Chron­i­cles, and quite enjoyed it. Years lat­er, some­one com­pared my writ­ing to Brad­bury’s. Hmmm.…
  7. Arthur Miller’s The Cru­cible had an impact on me. Espe­cial­ly Giles Corey’s death, off-scene, pressed by stones. His last words were “More weight”, and then he expired.
  8. When I was about nine years old, my moth­er, a for­mer teacher, did an extend­ed stint sub­bing in one of the junior high class­es. They were read­ing Incred­i­ble Jour­ney, and some of the stu­dents were com­plain­ing bit­ter­ly about hav­ing to read it. Mom brought home a copy for me, and I burned through it in a few days. The next time some­one com­plained in class, she point­ed out that her nine-year-old son had read it, and that appar­ent­ly shut them up.
  9. There are sev­er­al comix (actu­al­ly, I sup­pose, they’re more accu­rate­ly ban­des dess­inées) that I used to read dur­ing library peri­od at my elementary/junior high school. It was a French immer­sion school, so we were encour­aged (read forced) to read French books in the library. The loop­hole was that there was a hefty col­lec­tion of Schtroumpfs and Astérix et Obélix comics in the library. There were a lot of jokes in the char­ac­ters’ names in Astérix–the dog’s name, en français, was Idé­fixe (in Eng­lish, he goes by Dogmatix).
  10. Speak White by Michèle Lalonde, a poem about the oppres­sion of the French lan­guage in North Amer­i­ca (if I remem­ber cor­rect­ly). I took this in first-year uni­ver­si­ty French.

    11. Not So Much

  11. Pret­ty much any­thing by Gabrielle Roy. She takes a long time to say… noth­ing. I sup­pose this might be an indict­ment of lit­er­a­ture in gen­er­al, but heav­en help me, GR was, in my view, the queen of boring.
  12. Aldous Hux­ley’s Brave New World. I have friends who insist I should give it anoth­er shot, and I may yet. The sto­ry did­n’t appeal to me the first time, though. Then again, it was­n’t till my sec­ond read of Dune that I got into the story…
  13. See Dick Run. My grand­moth­er’s favourite sto­ry about me is that, once, to prove to some­one that I could read (at the age of three), she had me read a Dick & Jane book. I read it cov­er to cov­er, closed it, and said, “Well, that was a stu­pid sto­ry.” And now I think every­one I’ve ever met knows that story.

Oth­er 13ers:

Tech­no­rati: Thurs­day Thirteen

Good Tunes

Posted on by Patrick

So I was out dri­ving around yes­ter­day. I dropped Kath­leen off at work, then had to go down to the oth­er end of town* to get a par­cel in the mail. The radio start­ed play­ing dreck, as it will some­times do, so I tried anoth­er sta­tion. Specif­i­cal­ly, the local col­lege radio station.

Like I’ve said before, some­times the col­lege sta­tion will play good stuff, and some­times it’ll be crap, but even when it’s crap, it’s at least dif­fer­ent crap than on the cor­po­rate stations.

Yes­ter­day at about 7:00ish PM, some­one was pro­gram­ming for me. When I got to the mall, where the post office is locat­ed, they had just fin­ished play­ing “More” by 13 Engines. When I got back in the car, I had missed the first verse of “So Gen­tly We Go” by I Moth­er Earth. It was like it was the 90s alt-rock-when-it-still-meant-rawk hour or some­thing. I’m halfway sur­prised there was no Pearl Jam or Nir­vana in the set, but maybe I just missed it.

In short, it made me smile.

Wake me up when the day is late
So I can watch the sun­set and go back to bed
And dream so real of fan­tas­tic things,
Psy­chodra­mat­ic means to uncer­tain ends
I’ll scare you blind with my confidence,
Cool as Jesus and His twelve best friends
And the rea­son we can do these things is that
The earth has told of an out­ra­geous spring
Remembered…

–I Moth­er Earth, “So Gen­tly We Go”

__________________
* I make it sound like such a trek, but it’s fif­teen min­utes if the lights are against you. Actu­al­ly, yes­ter­day, it took almost twen­ty min­utes, because of an unex­pect­ed detour.

The Hotel

Posted on by Patrick

IMG_4416
Dis­cov­ered in colinedwards99’s Flickr photostream. 

…and to cap off your evening, what could be bet­ter than a roman­tic night at The Hexa­gon, the only four-star hotel in the West­ern Wastes? The hotel is pat­terned after the dis­tinc­tive shape of a snowflake, and fenced with a Wampa-proof perime­ter defence sys­tem, and our ever-chang­ing enter­tain­ment and din­ing menus will offer you a dis­tinc­tive stay every time.

Once again, let me thank you for con­sid­er­ing Hoth as your vaca­tion destination.

Tech­no­rati: flick­r­blog­ging

The Trees

Posted on by Patrick

I’ve been busy with writ­ing late­ly; the Trees sto­ry (“Can’t See the Stars for the Trees” or what­ev­er I’m cur­rent­ly call­ing it), so post­ing here has been a lit­tle spo­radic. Here’s a snip­pet from the story:

Right from the start, the boy was a godsend.

Toi and Chad­ow found him one evening, the sun just begin­ning to slide behind the night plate, in a pad­dy to wid­der­shins of their hutch.

They were walk­ing hand in hand, let­ting the scents of night blos­soms and the damp earthy scent of the rice waft over them, when Toi stopped, let go of his wife’s hand, and said, “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“Shh,” he said, putting his fin­ger to his lips. Chad­ow’s face took on a look of mixed con­ster­na­tion at being shushed and con­cen­tra­tion on find­ing the sound Toi thought that he had heard.

“I don’t hear–” she began.

Toi’s face lit up. “That,” he said, point­ing to spin­wise, into the pad­dies. He kicked off his san­dals, rolled up the cuffs of his loose cot­ton trousers, and wad­ed into the muck. Chad­ow watched him go, think­ing, My hus­band will dri­ve me mad one day.
She smiled, watch­ing him tak­ing care­ful steps, mind­ful not to com­mit his weight till he was sure the mud would­n’t swal­low him to the thigh, care­ful to keep his light-yel­low trousers clean.

Then some­thing made him stop cold in his tracks. Behind him, the mud was clos­ing over his foot­prints, set­tling back into a flat expanse of dull grey. He turned and looked back at her, over his shoul­der. “Chad­ow?” he said.

“Yes?” Some­thing in his tone made her voice catch in the back of her throat, so that her reply came out stran­gled and weak. She coughed. “Yes?” she said again, loud­er this time.

“You’re not going to believe this.” And then he plunged for­ward, arms flail­ing for bal­ance, heed­less of how much mud spat­tered on his clothes, of how many plants he trampled.

“What is it?” she asked, but he did­n’t spare her a reply.

#

It was a child.

She stared down into the bun­dle that Toi held in his arms. He’d wad­ed back out of the pad­dy, filthy with mud that he’d some­how man­aged to spat­ter all the way up to his neck, cradling the met­al bowl like it con­tained the most pre­cious, most frag­ile thing in the world.

It was a child, a naked baby boy. His smile broke her heart.

“How could–?” Words failed her, failed the sit­u­a­tion. How could some­one aban­don a child in the pad­dies? How could they live with them­selves after?

“He looks all right,” said Toi.

His face and hands, legs and tho­rax were pink with sun­burn. Tiny scars criss-crossed his tor­so, fine white lines against the bright rash. A thin blan­ket, tight­ly woven of some dark mate­r­i­al, was attached to the rim of the hemi­spher­i­cal sil­ver bowl, but the baby had kicked it off so that it hung down, worth­less for pro­tect­ing him from the sun or keep­ing him warm in the night.

“He can’t have been here too long,” said Toi.

His words pen­e­trat­ed the dull fog of rage that had suf­fused Chad­ow. She real­ized that her face must be a ric­tus, a con­tort­ed mask of anger. She could feel the flush all through her body. Her ears were burning.

She forced her­self to take a deep breath, a sec­ond, a third. She closed her eyes a long moment and whis­pered Calm calm calm to her­self, repeat­ing it like a mantra till it lost its mean­ing and became a sim­ple syl­la­ble to attach her world­view to.

“What do we do now?” she said to her husband.

But he was gaz­ing into the baby’s pale eyes, entranced, and the boy was star­ing back at him with the solemn face that only a baby can make. After a moment the child gig­gled, a sound that car­ried with it a per­fect inno­cence, and Chad­ow felt tears stream­ing unbid­den down her face.

Thirteen synopses

Posted on by Patrick
Editing

One-sen­tence syn­opses for projects I’m work­ing on.

  1. Earth Fleet
    A mys­te­ri­ous­ly emp­ty Earth serves as back­drop and cat­a­lyst to a final, apoc­a­lyp­tic bat­tle between two war­ring human civilizations.
  2. The Cold­est War
    An army of ghosts, res­ur­rect­ed in the out­er solar sys­tem, bat­tles against incur­sions from the liv­ing in the inner sys­tem and a swarm of alien ghosts from inter­stel­lar space.
  3. The Trees
    On a Dyson shell trav­el­ing through the inter­galac­tic dark, a young boy may be the descen­dant of the god­like peo­ple who launched the shell, or mere­ly the pawn of two fac­tions involved in a pro­tract­ed cold war.
  4. Every­thing That Nev­er Happened
    The cap­tain of a ketch is forced to work for zom­bies, but the trea­sure they seek may spell the end of life as he has known it.
  5. Salyx
    A young boy comes of age on a dis­tant colony world, just as Earth is attempt­ing to recon­nect with all the worlds it has lost touch with.
  6. The Par­ley
    The human race meets one last time on Earth to ham­mer out a uni­ver­sal truce, but a mur­der takes cen­ter stage.
  7. Esau
    A cyborg gun­slinger makes his way to the cap­i­tal of the king­dom, to kill his broth­er, the king.
  8. Heav­en and Earth
    A man, enslaved by the woman that killed and res­ur­rect­ed him, plots vengeance, but she is more dan­ger­ous that he knows.
  9. The Ash of Memory
    A woman pass­es through the bar­do, puri­fy­ing her­self and prepar­ing for her reincarnation.
  10. Fim­bul­vetr
    The last man in a snow-cov­ered world meets with char­ac­ters out of Norse myth.
  11. Yasht
    A Uni­verse-span­ning hive mind that may or may not be God makes con­tact with the human race.
  12. Across a Wound­ed Land
    A man teams up with a cyborg to res­cue his wife from a wiz­ard, but the cyborg has plans of his own.
  13. Heat Death
    After the stars go out, the gods gath­er to dis­cuss what comes next.

Oth­er Thurs­day Thir­teen participants

Hey there!

Titles are hard

Posted on by Patrick

Or they can be, anyways.

I’m work­ing on expand­ing and com­plet­ing the first draft of a sto­ry I start­ed in June. It’s set on a slice of a Dyson shell made of trees woven into each oth­ers’ root sys­tems, wrapped around a star and sent on its way into the inter­galac­tic dark. No one alive knows where they’re going, or why the world’s mak­ers (the For­got­ten Gods) sent them in the first place.

I’ve been call­ing it “Wis­dom Finds Me”, because that’s what the main char­ac­ter’s name means in the local for­est tongue, but I want some­thing more… some­thing more. Tonight I came up with “Can’t See the For­est for the Stars”, and I kind of like it, but I’m not entire­ly sure.

Any sug­ges­tions?

The Big Snit is online

Posted on by Patrick

If you haven’t seen it, click here now.

Appar­ent­ly the NFB (that’s the Nation­al Film Board, a Cana­di­an orga­ni­za­tion) has put a mit­t­ful of clas­sic short films online, includ­ing one of the fun­ni­est pieces of ani­ma­tions I’ve ever seen, “The Big Snit” by Richard Condie. Enjoy!

(Found via Boing­Bo­ing.)

Wind

Posted on by Patrick

Last night a fero­cious wind went through town.

There was­n’t any rain (not much, any­ways), but the wind got up to prob­a­bly about 100 km/h (~60 mph), and did a fair amount of dam­age. One co-work­er said that he’d seen a truck crushed under a tree on his way to work. My place got off fair­ly light.

Windstorm
This isn’t my fence. Fortunately.

Windstorm
Windstorm
A cou­ple shots of the tree branch that snapped in my front yard.