All in the Family

“Yeah,” quipped Liam, hardly cognizant of choosing his words before the tumbled from his mouth. “Long time no see.”

“Oh, so now you remember me? I knew you were full of shit, Liam. I knew it! Damn it, and now I’m payin’ the price for m . . .” but Liam stopped hearing the now constant and virulent stream of words erupting from his captive’s mouth. What was this guy talking about? What did he mean, now I remember him? Something tugged at the corner of Liam’s mind, an unsettled buzzing that evaporated with every attempt to bring it to consciousness, only to reconstitute again just past the fringes of his awareness.

Liam squinted away the confusion and raised the pistol he uncomfortably realized had fallen almost slack by his side. “Stupid stupid stupid! Stay focused here,” he thought to himself and he snarled and took a shuffle step towards the interloper in the chair. “Why don’t you just shut your mouth for a second. How ‘bout that, for old time’s sake?” And he pulled the hammer back with his thumb for emphasis.

“Sure, fine, whatev . . .” the stranger began again, seeming to gain steam with his mounting level of consciousness, but was swiftly clammed up as Liam lifted his pistol a few menacing inches. He splayed his hands up in a sign of contorted surrender from under the binding of the tape.

“Here’s how this is gonna work,” said Liam, now itching his temple with the dark muzzle of his borrowed piece. “I’ll ask you questions, you’ll answer. If I think you’re snowin’ me, you’ll get a matching set,” he finished, now gesturing with the pistol at the stranger’s duct taped forehead. The rumpled man grunted and rolled his eyes in resignation. “So first things first, champ. Who the hell are you.”

The man raised his eyebrows, questioning, until Liam waved him on with his free hand. “My name,” came the man’s low reply, “is Cwik. Ricky Cwick.” As the man began his response, Liam had began rifling through the small pile of the man’s possessions. He grabbed the wallet and flipped it open. The Nevada DL of Reginald Walker glowered back at him through yellowing plastic sleeve. Liam shook his head slowly, sneering as he stepped towards the chair and raised his gun.

“Wait!” yelped the prisoner, trying to maneuver his bound body away from the impending blow. Liam remained statuesque, pistol raised back over one shoulder ready to deliver a vicious blow. “Christ! You don’t think I carry my real ID around on me, do you? Walker’s my cover, I’m trying to be honest with you here, man.” Cwik ventured a quick look back up from his cowered position. “You really don’t remember me, do you Liam.”

“Remember you from where?!” erupted Liam, but as Cwik began to formulate his answer, Liam held up a finger. “One thing at a time. One thing at a time, Ricky. Who sent you after me?”

“Well that’s really two birds with one stone right there, Liam. You always were one for efficiency, weren’t you?” Cwik’s eye was crinkling into what appeared to be a grin, but the twinkle only managed to come out menacing in Liam’s estimation.

“So?” demanded Liam, pistol now back at the level, unwavering.

Cwik sighed and dropped his chin towards his chest, then brought his eyes back to meet Liam’s squarely. “Your father sent me here, Liam. Your father sent me to find you after what happened last April, and that’s how you know me. I’ve worked for your father and his family for 27 years.”

The buzz in the back of Liam’s mind got louder, but it was soon drowned out by a loud thud against the door to the suite. The door must have been sturdier than it looked to turn back the first assault, but the frame creaked and Liam saw the wall next to it shudder as a second blow was landed. It was evident the door would not hold long.

“Well,” said Cwik brightly, now apparently fully recovered from his stunning blow earlier. “They didn’t take long to show, did they? For all your efficiency, Liam, you do get bogged down in the details from time to time.”

Blood singing again in his ears, wild eyed, Liam scanned the small room and its contents past the barrel of his pistol. There weren’t many options.

Liam should now:

A) Attempt to barricade the door with furniture

B) Cut Cwik loose and attempt to use him as a hostage

C) Gag and hood Cwik, using him as ambush bait

D) Kill Cwik and use his body as a human shield while trying to escape through the unknown assailants.

Get Learnt

I have earned a meager income for the last two years of my life working for a tutoring centre that tries to fill in the gaps left by our state's education system. I see lots of kids who don't understand the reading strategies employed by their teachers, kids who have yet to learn their math facts by 10^th grade and kids that can't sit still for more than 83 seconds without climbing the walls and swinging from the ceiling. Some of my closest friends and my mother are also in the educational system, so when my professor recently assigned an article for my practicum cohort based on a lecture by a psychologist named Rudolph Dreikurs, I was extremely impressed by what he had to say. It has certainly given me material to think about as I tutor and work as a therapist. Here is the link to the full article, and below are some of the more exacting excerpts.

First Dreikurs lays some groundwork:

I have found many, many people who try so hard to be good. But I have failed yet to see that they have done so for the welfare of others. What I find behind these people who try to be so good is concern with their own prestige. They are good for the benefit of their own self-evaluation. Anybody who is really concerned with the welfare of others won't have any time or interest to be concerned with the question of how good he is.

There is only one area where we still can feel safely superior: When we are right. It is a new snobbishism of intellectuals: "I know more, therefore, you are stupid and I am superior to you." It is superiority of the moralists: "I am better than you; therefore, I am superior to you." And it is in this competitive strife to establish a moral and intellectual superiority that making a mistake became so dangerous again because, "If you find out that I am wrong, how can I look down at you? And if I can't look down at you, you certainly will look down at me."

And then he gets to the crux of his article . . .

I feel that in the majority of tests given to students the final mark does not depend on how many brilliant things he said and did, but how many mistakes he made. And if he made a mistake he can't get a hundred regardless of how much he has contributed on other parts of the same assignment. Mistakes determine the value. In this way, we unwittingly add to the already tremendous discouragement of our children.

It seems to me that our children are exposed to a sequence of discouraging experiences, both at home and in school. Everybody points out what they did do wrong and what they could do wrong. We deprive the children of the only experience which really can promote growth and development; experience of their own strengths. We impress them with their deficiencies, with their smallness, with their limitations; and at the same time try to drive them on to be much more than they can be. If we want to institute in children the enthusiasm which they need to accomplish something, the faith in themselves, regard for their own strengths; then we have to minimize the mistakes they are making, and emphasize all the good things, not which they could do, but which they do do.

It's Back

I'm bringing it back, and this time I've got backup. One of the better shows on network TV starts up again October 5th, let's hope their sophomore efforts match their debut.

Magic Brownies

It’s common knowlege that chocolate is not good for dogs, so naturally my wife and I were concerned when we discovered my 11 lb. Jack Russell Terrier ate 12 brownies. It took us a while to put the story together, piecing together the clues. About 6pm, we noticed her little pink belly was taunt and distended. She refused dinner. She licked her lips a lot. We were pretty sure she’d gotten into something, but the list of what it could be was extensive; it wasn’t until dessert time that we discovered the batch of brownies had turned up missing. Quelle méchante.

Reba lounged around the apartment for the rest of the evening, legs pushed slightly askew by her bulging belly. So far we hadn’t seen the brownies make a reappearance. When we put her to bed around midnight, Reba yowled and cried in her crate. Fearing that she might detonate a shitstorm of explosive diarrhea and vomit if we kept her confined all night, I was moved by compassion and a desire to not clean up the mess. “Let’s just leave her out tonight, babe,” I said. “If she tries to get up on the bed, we’ll just push her off, it shouldn’t be a big deal.” And it wasn’t. Until about 5am.

Consulting the internet about chocolate consumption in dogs the next morning, we discovered that . . . “As time passes and there's increased absorption of the toxic substance, you'll see an increase in the dog's heart rate, which can cause arrhythmia, restlessness, hyperactivity, muscle twitching, increased urination or excessive panting.” That would explain the manic rampage around our apartment from the hours of 5-8:30am. After the fourth strait lap through our apartment, jumping on and over every piece of furniture we own barking like Bill Cower on Crank, I finally got out of bed and groggily held one end of a rope with Reba spasmodically clamped onto the other. 150 minutes later, she seemed to have taken a slight edge off. She has since been fed a mild laxative, squeezed out several piles of a gooey tar-like substance, and calmed down substantially though her small belly still shows signs of distention. While I am sure that chocolate consumption poses a serious physiological threat to my dog’s life, it’s nothing compared to the carnage which will be visited upon her if she pulls off a repeat performance tonight. Oh, and check out my nasty ankle!

1. This morning about 6h30 during a brief respite from Reba's rampage




2. 10h30 tonight, after working on the car all afternoon




3. Some context

A Time to Laugh, a Time to Cry

I cried last night. I can’t say that it’s an unheard of occurrence; I remember one time particularly from my childhood when I had fallen off a ladder. It was the first time I had the wind knocked out of me. Sprawled on the ground in Osh Kosh B'Goshes and deck shoes, a fish out of water, the most terrifying part of the experience was trying to cry from the pain and finding the agency to do so had left with the forceful expulsion of air from my lungs. It wasn’t until they had time to reboot that I was able to give voice to my panic and pain. And voice it I did, clinging to my mother like a frantic baby rhesus as she patiently carried me back inside and smoothed my hair, accepting without question or protest the large damp spot on her Easter blouse where I buried my face .

It’s been a long three weeks for me since the beginning of my semester. Early mornings and later nights have taken their toll, so it would seem, on my psyche. I have doubled my client load at my first placement. I have helped a husband commit his wife of 35 years to a mental institution. I have stumbled upon the startling possibility that the reason I think my therapist is full of shit may in fact be because I think I am full of shit most the time I’m doing therapy. I have played 10 games of softball in two days. I have started academic work after a summer of solely clinical exercises. And last night after a particularly nasty sprained ankle in a fútbol match my team narrowly lost, the weight of this reality got to be a bit much for me. As I sat on the couch in the intermediary period before the ibuprofen took hold, frozen peas tied in place by my socks, the throbbing in my ankle kept time with the repeating third person replay of me landing awkwardly while trying to avoid the prostrate player. I make a small hop over a leg, take a stab at the ball, connecting tissues sue for breach of contract and the whole thing starts over again. Morgan’s face makes an appearance in my reverie: “They didn’t score, did they?” I ask, still clasping my lower calf with both hands and grimacing. He smiles a wry smile and cocks his head while he pats mine.

My tears were Pringles, impossible to stop after just one. This time it was my wife’s sweaty soccer jersey that absorbed my tears as she held me and smoothed my hair. I’m not embarrassed that I cried, in fact I’m glad that I did. It’s started me thinking: in a world rife with suffering and pain and hurt and sorrow as well as joy, celebration and ecstasy why do we laugh so much more than we cry? Or is that just me?

Seeing Double

I actually think that Carrie has done well in the Country market, so this isn't a slam on her. This song has been bugging me for a while, though, and I thought I'd feed it to the wolves to see what yall think. Click on the video and move ahead to :40 and/or read the chorus provided below. Woman power, right? Female empowerment? Three snaps in a 'Z', etc, etc. Now switch the gender pronouns and ask Quaadir Brown if the tune sounds familiar . . .

That I dug my key into the side of his pretty little souped up 4 wheel drive,
carved my name into his leather seats,
I took a Louisville slugger to both headlights,
slashed a hole in all 4 tires...

Maybe next time he'll think before he cheats.

Worm Hole

Yesterday morning, I woke up at 6:30. Am. It's by no means a record for me, but after the second early morning rousing to drive down to scenic Handford, CA . . . the body wasn't diggin' it. Despite the severe and legitimate protests by my circadian rhythms, I slouched down the hallway and mindlessly spooned a bowl of oatmeal into my mouth. I evidently got dressed somewhere in the intervening minutes, hastily collected an assortment of portfolios, gym shorts and computer bags and kissed my wife goodbye. Bemoaning the fact that I had woken up at 6h30 and was still running late, I wrenched open the front door and stepped unexpectedly into Houston, TX.

In the mid-80's and humid as a Gorilla's armpit at 7 in the morning, the electrical storms and intermittent pelting of precipitation reminded me fondly of my time at University in College Station, TX. I am one of the few who inexplicably love humidity. Partly because my hair can't get any worse, partly because I've vowed to align myself with the Powers of Heat over the Powers of Cold, yesterday was a free sauna and I loved every minute of it.

Enchanté

Chapter 3

Still absently blinking as his heart rate began to stabilize and the rest of the room came into focus, Liam’s hands fell momentarily to his knees and he stood silently bracing his body on locked elbows like a man who had just sprinted down a hallway and knocked an unexpected interloper to his hotel suite out cold with an oak book-end. As his brain began to warm up, executive functions beginning to catch up with the primal explosion, Liam soon realized that leaving the man unrestrained on the floor would soon prove to be a disastrous course of inaction. Stripping the man of his overcoat, Liam quickly ran through the man’s pockets and retrieved a small pile of booty. Both hands full, casting about the small sitting room in the tangerine glow of the serene ceiling lamp, Liam dumped his haul into the utilitarian wood grained laminate desk against the wall behind him. Next he grabbed the stunted table lamp from where it had been holding up a guide to local eateries and a Gideon’s Bible, and wrenching the cord from the back of the lamp with his left hand he set the pistol down next to the man’s possessions on the desk’s pocked surface got to work on the downed interloper. After awkwardly attempting to reassemble the scattered limbs, Liam hog-tied the stranger where he lay and eased him onto his side. Liam was almost overcome with the wave of stale marijuana smoke mingled with cheap booze and cheaper aftershave as the man’s face oscillated towards the ceiling. Wrinkling his nose in distaste, his still-heightened senses reeling from such a salient olfactory encounter, Liam left his ears in the sitting room and shot back down the hall towards the bedroom to retrieve his large black duffel. Ripping the zipper the length of the bag and unceremoniously dumping its contents in a shower of matted socks and rumpled t-shirts, Liam scooped up the roll of duct tape that had fallen heavily on top of the clothes and hurried back down the hall to find his charge unchanged.

Lugging the man’s body into the musty overstuffed sitting chair, cheek to cheek with the sallow visage of his assailant, Liam could feel his shallow breathing as the abrasive stubble grated into his own moderately scruffy skin. He haphazardly spun several dozen laps of the silvery webbing taut around the man’s body, the tape screeching as it pulled loose from the roll, securing him to the seat. Gaunt frame sagging against the restraint, Liam quickly assessed the man’s wounds. Not too bad. The man’s nose had nearly stopped bleeding, but the gash on his head looked angry and was still pushing a moderate amount of blood through the nascent clots. Wincing despite himself as he leaned in for a closer look, he took in the face’s features. They were craggy and grizzled, a face that could have been any age between 28 and 53, and seemed malicious even in their unconscious state. Scars festooned the man’s lips and cheeks, and lines of hard living were etched into deep folds around his eyes and mouth.

Liam quickly double checked the bonds on the man’s hands and feet and dashed off again down the hall to the bathroom, retrieving a spare roll of toilet paper and a plastic trash can with a brown flower on the front. Filling the trash can with a few inches of water from the faucet, Liam returned to crudely staunch the wound and clean some of the blood away with a sopping mass of cheap one-ply toilet paper. Once he had effected some semblance of repair, Liam dropped his bloody wad of tissue into the remaining water at the bottom of the trash can. As diluted blood continued to make its way down the eroded crags of the man’s cheek, Liam ripped off another four-inch swatch of duct tape and stretched it as tight as he could over a patch of fresh toilet paper before pressing it over the rend on the man’s oily forehead. Slapping it soundly once for good measure, he nearly tripped on his own feet as the man suddenly jerked and began to struggle against the layers of tape adhering him to the chair. The prisoner emitted a growling noise as he vainly thrashed in the grips of the tape, wild and low, but never cried out. Swiftly regaining his poise, Liam snatched the pistol from off the desk nearby and leveled it at the stranger, now glaring at him. One eye was nearly obscured with blood and duct tape. The other eye half squinted at Liam, who was unable to tell if the man was attempting to smile or glare at him.

“Oh, hello, Liam,” the man croaked. “Fancy meeting you here.”

Liam should respond:

A) "Yeah, long time no see."

B) "You've got about three seconds to start talking before I paint my nice pretty room here with the shit you call your brains."

C) "Who are you and what do you want with me?"

D) Say nothing, but stare coldly down the barrel of his new gun.

Who, Me?!

Today was a day of firsts for me. This morning I started my new work-out routine from Bill Pearl’s strength manual. Today was the first time in a long time that I’ve spent consecutive days in the Daily Book of Prayer. Today is the first time I can remember when I have been overtly propositioned.

Sitting at the intersection of Bullard and Villa at 11h45 this morning, listening to Talk of the Nation on NPR and (as Blake Shelton would say) minding my own, a setting which shall live . . . in infamy. I was making a bid for the right turn, sandwiched between the through traffic and the curb, when I noticed one of the girls in the car next to me casting furtive glances back in my direction. Catching her eye, I summoned by best head jerk and wan smile, expecting little if anything in return. To my utter shock and discombobulation, the girl mouthed something back to me. Puzzled, brows furrowing, I cocked my head shook it slowly from side to side, an electrocution in slow motion. I didn’t understand. Again, she mouthed her demand. Again I was nowhere close to deciphering the code, all blank stare and oscillating cranium. After three more failed attempts, the window crank was employed. I silenced Neal Conan with a careless flail at the radio face-plate.

“Hey, ma girl wants ta know, is you single?”

“Oh . . . uh,” I stammered, taken aback. I would have been better prepared to give the square root of 43 2/3. “Ah, no. I’m married,” I finished lamely, brandishing the ring of my left hand.

“Ah, aight,” and they pulled away at the light.

Thanks, random girls at the light on Bullard and Villa. I think.

Let's Try That Again . . .

Chapter 2b

Digging his knuckles into his eye sockets and straining his already extended senses beyond their limits, Liam could almost swear he could now hear the soft whistle of breathing intermittently trickle down the short dim hallway which lead to the rest of the suite he had been occupying for the last two weeks. His thoughts drifted to the past seven months of furtive habitation in suite after dingy suite in dive after dilapidated dive. He tried to remember the last time he had managed to string together more than six hours of restful sleep, but only managed to come up with a memory of his 7^th birthday party. Transformer theme. That had been fun.

Savagely shaking his head and rubbing his knuckles across his scalp, Liam froze as a he heard a soft suppressed cough ricochet down the hallway. His adrenal glands found a new gear he thought might actually cause him to vomit as the invisible spear of excitement exploded in his gut and effervesced through his scalp and toe-nails. Backing away from his perch directly behind the thin partition, Liam eased his head towards the hall-ward side of the door, catching a peek at the stark gray hallway and darker still room that lay beyond. Nothing could be seen stirring from that vantage, but all hope that he was alone in the suite had utterly evaporated. Tightening his gut and wiping his right hand on his boxers before re-gripping the cool hard bookend, Liam eased the door fully open and strained his eyes on the hallway’s aperture into the rest of the suite. ‘Fortune favors the bold,’ he thought to himself as he felt his feet begin to pump, grimacing mouth holding back his breath, a levy struggling against a flash flood. As the short hallway whizzed jarringly by, against the dim sitting room ahead an inky profile swung suddenly out from the left-hand wall.

“Oh, shit!” was all the gravelly voiced silhouette was able to blurt out before Liam hit him full tilt. Wrenching the body towards his own with his free left hand, Liam felt his forehead make contact with the bridge of the strangers nose, and as the intruder reeled back under the initial blow a vicious roundhouse swing with the bookend dropped the thin-framed figure to the floor with a perfunctory thud.

His shoulders heaving, blinking fiercely in the aftermath of the encounter, Liam spotted a wicked looking black Beretta Px4 on the floor near the body. Quickly stepping towards it and toeing it out of arms reach, Liam gingerly skirted the prone figure to be able to pick the pistol up himself. The body on the floor lay still, looking almost comical face down with limbs akimbo. “Squashed spider!” Liam wanted to guess, but there were no other contestants playing charades and the man on the floor didn’t seem able to either confirm or deny his postulation.

Keeping his eyes glued on the crumpled mass splayed on the floor, Liam backed up until his groping hand found the light switch, flooding the scene a warm light from the tattered orange light fixture hanging from the center of the room's ceiling. Taking a closer look, Liam could see that his interloper was beginning to ooze blood from his head and nose, slowly adding his own scarlet circlet to the already riotously stained carpet.

Liam should search the guy and then. . .

a) Jet, leaving the body there

b) Finish the job with his new gun

c) Tie the guy up in a chair and wait for him to come around

d) Take off immediately, forget even searching th guy

Long Shots

As jaded as I am with the current political process in this country, with its reward of duplicitous speech and exaggerated differences between facetious candidates impotently pandering to some vague middle ground which nobody at all seems to actually espouse, ‘Republican’ Ron Paul has recently piqued my interest in the 2008 Presidential Race. A ten year veteran of Texas’ 14^th district, Congressman Paul still stands on his Libertarian (and some would say, truly Republican) philosophy of reduced government spending, strong state’s rights and free trade. As a matter of principle he refuses his Congressional stipend, voted against what has now been exposed as the woefully under-planned Iraq War Resolution and in the process of saving several baby seals from being clubbed to death discovered a compound which makes teeth both whiter and stronger. Ok, so I made the last one up, but he is bringing a breath of fresh air to a party which by all other indications has become utterly moribund over the last eight hard years.

Sure his name sounds like an adult film star, but in a Republican race where John McCain is begging lunch money off the sound guy and Rudy Giuliani is scalping Yankees tickets to the debate moderator, something about the pugnacious Mr. Paul has caught my fancy. I know he’s not the prefect candidate. I don’t mesh well with several planks in his platform, he's at times ludicrously unrealistic and he would be a wildly impractical President, likely making Jimmy Carter look as efficacious as Josef Stalin moving legislation through Congress. Regardless, here’s hoping for the greatest American tradition: The Long Shot. Viva Ron!

The Little Things

Today is August 8th, 2007. The time: 13h26. The temperature? 84^oF (29^o C). This is a most convenient truth.

Liam's next chapter is coming soon . . .

Graceless

WARNING: Prolonged vent ahead! I try not to openly vent too often because I tend to be a tad juvenile about it, but this got me riled up last weekend and I couldn't help myself. What's a blog for if not for venting sometimes, right?! Anyway . . .

Some say that it’s best to expect the unexpected, but I’ve found that to be rather tiring endeavour; I prefer instead to just not assume too much. Even still, it’s refreshing to know that the Earth is a big enough place that no matter how unassuming I am there will still be contexts which leave me confused and disoriented. This weekend while I was relaxing in downtown Santa Cruz at a small café, on their sleek flat screen TV in between the woman with shorn hair openly breast feeding her young child, the French kids, the petite Asian student and the glazed thoroughly inked beach denizen was something that did not belong: Nancy Grace. I was nettled.

Nancy Grace, the brackish talk show host who eked out a living as a state prosecutor before becoming one of the most inane talking heads on a TV today, was staring out at me smugly in a Santa Cruz coffee shop. I can only assume that something more worthwhile had been on before her and that the channel just hasn’t gotten changed, but there she was none the less. She opined for several minutes about the recent tragedy in South Carolina involving the death of two small children found under a kitchen sink, and for the most part I couldn’t hear what she was saying so I was left unperturbed, except for occasionally catching her sneering visage from the corner of my eye. She eventually, however, stumbled her way on to the Michael Vick saga; while I still couldn’t clearly hear what vitriolic and uninformed diatribe she had embarked on, the footage for the spot was her and an assortment of talking heads in small boxes in the corner of the screen while they rolled stock footage of put bulls fighting in rings.

So let me get this strait . . . we’re indicting Michael Vick for fighting dogs, and in the process ejaculating every condemnation imaginable about the depravity and inhumanity of the practice. About how anyone who would stoop to even watching let alone organizing dog fights deserves time in Federal prison. About how the concept is so vile it should hardly be mentioned. In the meantime, though, while we talk about it ad nauseum, you might as well take in some footage of dogs ripping each other up. Perfect. Makes perfect sense. Thank you, CNN, for providing us with that well crafted piece of journalistic integrity.

I don’t know to what extent Vick was involved in the dog fighting ring being run out of his house in Virginia, but I do find dog fighting one of the more reprehensible practices around. Close behind, however, is watching Nancy Grace or any of the other difficult-to-respect-or-take-seriously reactionary thick-hearted and stiff-necked hacks running amok in the news media. Mercifully the channel was changed shortly after the Michael Vick spot began.

Yall Chose B

Chapter 2a

With anxiety dripping from his every pore, Liam inched his way around the listing bedroom door. His senses now almost fully divested of sleep’s dullness, every input was now being registered with laser precision. The cat yowling outside was out-clamored by a slamming dumpster while water dripped somewhere nearby and the toilet valve screamed at him as it clicked on momentarily to top of the perpetually leaking tank. The stale odor of years of tobacco imbibed by the walls around him combined with the delicate smell of the earliest morning, and both flirted with the slightest tinge of garlic. Trying not to think about the cute take-out girl from the Italian joint he’d ordered dinner from the night before, Liam began his stealthy descent towards the end of the short hallway. The suite he had been inhabiting for the last two weeks hung in a dull grey light, purgatory of the day, nearly familiar shapes indistinguishable in the small sitting room at the mouth of his vestibular avenue. Breaching the aperture of the hallway, still crouched and primed with the bookend at the ready, what had been at first a remnant of garlic odor swelled to an belligerent hurricane of olfactory sensation with overtones of cheap liquor and cheaper aftershave. Realizing too late the garlic scent had nothing to do with the leftover chicken parmesan in the sink, Liam turned to his left towards the impending onslaught. The last thing he saw as he wheeled around raising the bookend was the black steel dough nut of a silencer, followed by a Beretta Px4 both half obscuring a thin grizzled face sporting what would be the most and last unctuous sneer he ever saw.

////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Well . . . that was quick. So, the question is now where we go from here. Suggestions?

Holy Kegger

Some of my favourite friends are the ones who constantly surprise me. Even after living with the guy for a year in college, my friend Chef Hanssen still manages to pleasantly surprise me every time I have the opportunity to talk with him on the phone, or better yet, to hang out. Reading the Bible is often like hanging out with Chef for me, constantly being surprised by a Father God and Christ who consistently refuse to stay in the boxes that we’ve furiously constructed for them to inhabit.

Most recently, I have been taken a bit aback by John 2. Many of yall know the story: Jesus is invited to a poorly planned wedding, gets goaded by his mother, and bails out the party host by coming up with some wine. There’s a lot more to the story, however, than the felt-board narrative I remember from Sunday school. The jars that Christ uses to perform His miracle are ceremonial cleansing jars, and I don’t know enough about Jewish culture to know what the significance of using them is, let alone filling them with wine. Was this an act of convenience or was there a deeper significance to the jars?

Perhaps most shocking, however, is what happens after Christ selects his vessels. A far cry from what we would expect from the pious figure cross-legged in the lotus position, Christ commands that six ceremonial jars, each containing 20-30 gallons each, be filled with water which is subsequently transubstantiated into wine. For those of you doing the math at home, that’s about 150 gallons of wine. Crunching a few more figures, we discover that such a volume of wine would fill over 750 standard wine bottles or nearly 300 two-litre bottles. That is a lot of wine. Furthermore, Jesus broke out this wine after everyone had already drunk through the previous supply and were well on their way to significant headaches the next morning. What does this tell us, if anything, about Christ’s ethics of alcohol? What he did for a good time? This is the stuff I wonder about sometimes.

Get Excited

I've decided to be bold and install a feature I've been thinking about doing for a while. Here's hoping that it goes better than the movie reviewing . . . right?! Anyway, I used to love reading Choose Your Own Adventure books when I was young and I thought it'd be a fun thing to try on a blog. The plan is to update the feature weekly, so vote on the course of action you think most prudent at the end of each post and we'll see how many times we can end up dead. And now . . .

La Concha

The adrenalin was already singing through his chest and river dancing on his bowels by the time Liam’s eyelids snapped open, beginning to register his murky surroundings. The garish radiance of red, blue and yellow neon intermittently lit the room with a wan rainbow through the worn curtains hanging over the solitary barred window. His horizontal view shifted as he raised himself from his sweat-drenched pillow and swiped his hand over his damp face. “Stupid brain,” he murmured to no one in particular, now rubbing sleep from his left eye and yawing cavernously. Stealing a glance at the digital clock glowing a verdant 2:17 he shook his head ruefully. “Always coming with these weird drea . . . ” but he trailed off as he heard over the usual nocturnal bustling of the city about him a soft but distinct thump and faint rustle come from down the small hallway which lead to his kitchenette, like the sound of a trench coated body grazing a grimy wall.

With every nerve in his body now aflame and extending what felt like inches past his skin, Liam gingerly disentangled himself from his matted bed clothes and snatched the carved wooden bookend from his bedside table as he eased himself silently onto the dingy low-pile carpet of his bedroom floor. Toeing aside a discarded t-shirt and stepping over a pair of black wingtips, he ever so gently padded towards his slightly ajar bedroom door. Creeping along the wall of his bedroom, making sure to keep the door between him and the hallways as much as possible, Liam nervously worked his grip on the bookend, finding its solid weight and sublime burnish somehow reassuring. Arriving at the door still wound tighter than a nun at a frat party, he thought he could hear nasally breaths being drawn steadily from somewhere on the other side of the flimsy piece of composite board now only inches from face, but over the whooshing of traffic and the buzzing of the neon sign outside his window it was impossible to tell for sure.

Liam should:

A) Charge down the hallway into the kitchenette

B) Attempt to sneak down the hallway

C) Stay put behind the door until daylight

D) Call out to see if anyone is there

Bodamania

Things I learned while in Mexico for my brother-in-law's wedding:

1. In the States we slow our speech and get uncomfortably close to a person if they don't understand our English. It would seem that in Mexico, the opposite is true. Tío Sergio was especially fond of approaching and rapidly pelting me with urgent sounding Spanish. I would blink slowly, quickly sorting through my lexicon of approximately 25 Spanish words and see if any of them sounded like they could fit into the preceding deluge. Next I would venture a translation: "You gave the box to Tom?" Tío Sergio would blink back, say, " . . . No." And then launch into what seemed to me a more complicated and break-neck Spanish explanation. All in all a great time.

2. You can pay $10 (US) to go 10 kilometres in a Taxi or $15 (US) to go 200 kilometres on Omnibus Mexico. This leads me to the conclusion that we either got shamelessly bent over on a cab fare or the bus system in Mexico is subsidized. I'm inclined to think a little or both.

3. It's possible for the temperature to remain in the low 30's C and still sweat through two shirts in under 15 minutes while sitting in the shade. It's not pretty, but it's possible.

4. Harry Potter has spread at least as far south as Tampico, Mexico. So has Wal-Mart.

5. It is entirely possible to spend four days in Mexico, enjoy the local cuisine to the fullest, and not suffer any major gastrointestinal incidents.

6. Rumours of 'Mexican Time' have been greatly under-exaggerated. When the bride showed up at 7h15 for the 6h00 wedding I knew I wasn't in Kansas anymore.

7. Despite the laws of physics which dictate that no two objects can occupy the same space at the same time, two-way traffic on 18'-wide roads in Mexico continues unperturbed.

8. Just because the 1h15am (A. M. !!!!!) flight to Mexico is cheaper doesn't mean you won't still pay dearly for it.

9. Shockingly, some parts of Fresno are nearly identical to rural Mexican towns.

10. I enjoy Mexico a lot more than I thought I did.

PS. The pic is not my brother in law. Just some yokel I found on Google image.

Lo!

There arose in those dark days a champion from amongst the Arbourists against which no unruly shrub nor unkempt tree could stand.  It is said that his saw sang stridently as it slaked its sap-lust slashing through misshapen foliage, and that the sound of his loppers was like a great engine breaking, a cacophony of staccato blasts chewing blithely through the stoutest of boughs.  Amongst the evergreens he was named Ethanatl-ul-taunphl, which in their tongue means "€˜He who hews with impunity."  Amongst the hard-woods he is called Ntllny’phn Hlthyphn, which means, "€˜The Steel Jaw."  Rumours of his shearing feats spread far and wide throughout the deciduous and coniferous world, and it is said that when the wind blows the trees can still feel his presence on the breeze; this is why they both moan in sympathy for the pruning of their brethren and quake with fear of their own inevitable coiffing as the gusts pass them by.

Good Idea/Bad Idea

Today, Friday the 13th, 2007, will find me pruning my parent's Chinese elms. This activity involves several ladders, sharp implements and me dangling anywhere from 5-20 feet in the air while stretching to lop off offending boughs. I'm thinking about bringing along a couple mirrors and throwing them down to the concrete below just to make a propper job of it.

Der Untergang

I should have realized when I started reviewing movies that I would never keep up with my copious consumption. I’m several films behind by now, well over a month since my last movie post, and after some soul searching I’ve come to terms with the reality of the situation. From now on, I’ll stick to only reviewing the standouts and smatter some of the more pedestrian films in and amongst real meat and potatoes. If, by some unfortunate accident, I happen to pigeonhole your favourite film into the ‘pedestrian’ category, I apologize in advance and will happily reprint a full retraction upon request. That being said . . .

Since my last post, I’ve had the pleasure of watching five films. At least four of them were completely different. They are, in order:

1. Love Actually (a James Orr fav)
2. Downfall
3. Confetti
4. Jesus Camp
5. Borat

I only really want to talk about Downfall, and I’ll leave the rest to scores and highlights.

The Germans, if you didn’t already know, are a singular people. Athletic, intelligent, cultured and industrious, it’s little wonder they very nearly brought the world to its knees twice within a span of 50 years. The film Downfall, an unflinching examination of Hitler’s final days as seen through the eyes of his personal secretary Traudl Junge, manages to capture the zeitgeist of the Nazi regime in its unwavering discipline, staunch principles, debauchery, decadence and myopia. Not once are the writers tempted to resort to painting their characters as caricatures, but instead force the viewer to witness the humanity inexplicably coupled with the monstrosity of the Nazi regime as Joseph Goebbles sings with his children and Hitler shares tender moments with his staff and friends.

The film is book-ended by an interview with Ms. Junge, and as the film closes she recounts a momment late in her life of passing by a monument to Jews killed at a labour camp and suddenly feeling the conviction of 6 million souls. " . . . But I hadn't made the connection with my past," says Junge. "I assured myself with the thought of not being personally guilty. And that I didn't know anything about the enormous scale of it. But one day I walked by a memorial plate of Sophie Scholl in the Franz-Joseph-Strasse. I saw that she was about my age and she was executed in the same year I came to Hitler. And at that moment I actually realised that a young age isn't an excuse. And that it might have been possible to get to know things."

While most WWII films claim to educate us about the atrocities so that we never allow anyone to commit them again, this film instead strives to warn the viewer that the person we must strive to censure is not a faceless enemy but in fact ourselves. It is our acquiescence, our own willingness to complacently follow and unquestioningly serve that must be constantly examined. In a nation where a genocide which still leaves its ghastly scar on a proud people is politely swept under the rug of casinos and firework stands every day, this film about personal and national responsibility speaks loudly and honestly about what can easily happen on any scale anywhere when we start to let our humanity come in second to expediency and convenience.
Grade: A+

Scores and Highlights:

Love Actually: A fun little romantic jaunt with the who’s who of British thespians. Strait down the pipe, with the drunken Bill Nighy character stealing the show for me.
Grade: B

Confetti: Another who’s who of British comedy, go figure. A clever film about marriage and weddings with a few genuinely funny moments, this film includes even more nudity than the previous, but none of it sexual. Actually very well done and enjoyable, I’d recommend it to anyone not offended by nudists.
Grade: B+

Jesus Camp: I was expecting a much more hard-hitting view of frighteningly conservative Christians, but the film really only picked on one charismatic church group from Missouri. Copious film editing and questionable sequencing aside, it was a fascinating look at the isolationist tendencies and blind espousing of rhetoric in certain conservative circles. Also featured in the film: Creepy behind the scenes clips of Ted Haggard preaching against homosexuality at his megachurch. Good times.
Grade: C+

Borat: Yeah . . . see it if you want to.
Grade: C