The Cheeseblog

(still too lazy to get up and turn off the radio, so CBC is still live from jean jean’s bye bye party)

Don’t you think that if you’ve run out of things to say about the outgoing prime minister and have resorted to inane commentary on his wife,

(“always elegant, even after all these years.” “Sure is, Bob. Sure is. I wonder what she’s thinking right now, as her husband takes the podium, maybe for the last time.”)

maybe you should drop the live coverage and move on to, I don’t know, the news or something?

I’m sure something horrible happened today. Tell me about it!

…oh, there is this.
I’m just thrilled to know that Lillian VanderZalm is still kickin’ it live! 365!

Paul Anka just sang “Diana” for Jean Chretien. He just called JeanJean “our grand fromage.” Pot? Kettle?

Hey, you know that girl who works at the office, the one that has kind of funny hair, like funny weird, not funny cool? She always talks to everybody with that strange artificial confidence, like she’s trying to convince herself to be more confident when she talks to people? She’s hoping that will make people care what she’s talking about? But no one does?

But of course, it’s an office, so except for the one mean girl, everyone pretends they like the girl with the funny hair. But they go for lunch without her, accidentally. And they never listen after they ask how her weekend was. And they secretly think she’s annoying and they tell each other how annoying they think she is, when they’re with friends in the stock room looking for liquid paper ™ or when they’re out for lunch together.

At the Christmas party, she wore the weirdest skirt. It was taffeta with different coloured taffeta stripes on it. It was too big for her and she had to keep hiking it up while she danced and boy could she ever not dance. And were those shoes from 1988?

Then, after years, it finally happens. She quits, moves on, ‘has had enough of this hell-hole, ha ha ha!’ She gets a job at a different office, making slightly more money. Yay girl! You go, girl! ‘I’ll get your phone numbers and we’ll have lunch! ha ha ha!’

Everyone in the office surreptitiously notes the date, 14 days from now, when it will be her last day. Everyone makes plans to take that day off.

For 13 days, she walks around with her head in the clouds, humming, “only 10 more days!” and “only 8 more days!” and “guess how many more days?” and she takes it as a compliment when people guess right. She says, “gee I’m not going to miss this photocopier!” And everyone smiles, a little more broadly, because she’s leaving, after all and they can afford to be nice just that much longer.

On day 13, she brings in a cake. Everyone gets excited because maybe TODAY is her last day! But it isn’t; she just noticed on the schedule that everyone was taking the next day off and she really wanted everyone to get a piece of cake. Everyone comes to the staff room and she sings a little “happy quitting day to me!” song and everyone smiles obligingly. The cake is bad, Safeway cake, mostly sugar with sugar icing and “Goodbye Girl!” on it. She ordered it herself. She tries to make conversation with people and mostly they participate, but it is grim participation and they are close to their long weekend.

After most of the cake is gone, the girl skips to the kitchen to wash all the forks, something she said she would never do again, but she’s doing it, just because it’s her second to last day in this hell hole! Hooray!

Everyone goes home and gets really drunk and emails each other and says things like “a toast, to the girl, who is finally gone!” After a few years, those who are still left at the office come to reflect on the girl with some affection. “She wore fun vests,” they say, “and she had good spirit.” “Yes,” say others, “but she lost $400 from the petty cash. And then we all had to fill out POs. I hated her.”

Jean Chretien? It is time to leave now. No more parties, no more farewell speeches, no more ENTIRE FOCUS SECTIONS in the Globe and Mail, no more TV specials, no more tribute albums (I hope I’m joking) no more no more no more. You’re done. Go home before I come out there and kick your ass.

No shadow
no stars
no moon
no cars
november

it only believes
in a pile of dead leaves
and a moon
that’s the color of bone

no prayers for November
to linger longer
stick your spoon in the wall
we’ll slaughter them all

november has tied me
to an old dead tree
get word to april
to rescue me
november’s cold chain

made of wet boots and rain
and shiny black ravens
on chimney smoke lanes
november seems odd
you’re my firing squad
november

with my hair slicked back
with carrion shellac
with the blood from a pheasant
and the bone from a hare

tied to the branches
of a roebuck stag
left to wave in the timber
like a buck shot flag

go away you rainsnout
go away blow your brains out
november
– Tom Waits

I don’t have a full time job. Haven’t since March of this year. As many people who do work have noted, every day for me is like a holiday – less so than at the beginning of my unemployment – so I’ve been pretty faithful about keeping to a schedule so that I don’t go CRAZY. But today is a stat holiday, Armistice/Remembrance day. I feel all special and day-off/y, even though, well, it’s a lot like yesterday except sunny instead of raining.

My plan for the day includes taking a few hours to read “And no Birds Sang” by Farley Mowatt. Word says it’s a good, candid account of going to world war II. I bought it used at the local bookseller’s, a shop we’ve been meaning to look at for months now.
(it’s the same store where I bought all my textbooks for my first year of university. We read a variety of literature, history, philosophy and had I purchased them at UBC bookstore [as lovely as it is] I would have spent lots more than I needed to. Plus, I got books with character.)

While we browsed the bookseller’s, no less than 6 people came into the shop and I thought, hooray, someone else shops here too, because it was very quiet for a Saturday afternoon and the man who works there seemed quite surprised to see us. But all of these people were hauling bags of books that they wanted to get rid of. The man who works there explained patiently to each that the store was overstocked (which would have been obvious if anyone had taken a moment to look around) and he wasn’t looking to buy. One woman simply left her bag, said “you can have them” and walked out. As though money was the issue. Another man, when told he had some worth buying, at a value of $10 cash or $15 trade, said he’d take them down the street to another store to see if he could get a better deal.

It was so sad! Books are so important. I know that people need money, clean their closets, dump their husbands, whatever and need to get rid of their books. But I can’t fathom going into a used bookstore and not even looking around, not even walking to the end of the store and back, to smell that smell and touch the dust and crane my neck a little or a lot to see the titles and find the poetry section and the self help section and the ‘literature’ section.

Anyway, we made up for all those people and bought 8 books. My goal is to buy more books. I already have lots, but there are still more being made. And I read an interesting piece in the globe & mail a couple weeks ago, in the form of a letter from a writing teacher to her students, suggesting that maybe their ‘workshop’ money would be better spent on hardcover novels so that by the time they’d written their own, there would still be a market for such things.

It’s a good point: people like to get things for free, myself included. But why do we accept things for free that are directly related to the art we most love? Musicians take music, writers take the internet, filmmakers take movies. And then we complain that there is no market for our art, that no one is buying, that we have to take shitty jobs to make a living. It’s tough to spend money on hardcover books, films, double CDs. Sometimes it’s unjustifiable, since the money goes to the film distributers, publishers, record executives. But the overarching message we’re sending out is still: I don’t think this stuff is worth paying for. (but my OWN stuff is, so please buy it) And you wonder why artists are tortured? One side of the brain is trying to convince you that you’re worth it, while the other side is saying you’re not.

Hey – I am totally guilty of this. It’s not a criticism of your practises, whoever you are, but an observation about my own. It’s my b-log, after all. If you want to be the subject of criticism, get your own b-log.

You have to be a friend to make a friend.

Everyone I know is getting a book for Christmas.

I know that my purchasing Farley Mowatt’s book will not yield him any money. But it gave some to the bookseller guy and that is also worth it.

And now it’s almost 9.

I recommend:
for listening:
Rebecca Moore’s Home Wreckordings 1997 – 1999. It’s bare, charged music that she recorded in her own home (yup). It crackles with electricity. It’s so good.

For reading:
Marnie Woodrow wrote a book called Spelling Mississippi that was fabulous. She’s also written lots of short stories and her website has a journal that’s well written and some other fun stuff.

If Chad Kroeger was a cheese, he would be Danish Esrom. This cheese is like Havarti on crystal meth. You wrap a block of Havarti in some foil and leave it in your toilet tank for three years. Then you remove it and dunk it in gasoline. Then you light it on fire. When the fire has been extinguished, it’s ready to eat! Cut through the foil and the cheese. It will ooze a lot: this is normal. The smell will nearly bowl you over: this is also normal (some say “good”). Find some crackers, and enjoy!

Here’s a poem about cheese that if, set to music, could be a song. I’m not saying what kind of song. Oh! and check out the “literature” page at same site. There are lots of poems about cheese there. Stories, too!

This is some Esrom
and here is the lowdown on it.

Please note: this does not mean that I think Chad is “bad” or “rotten” or “smelly.” I merely illustrate a comparison between two things in this world for which I have no desire but for which some select (80,000,000, in some cases) people do. Isn’t life wacky?