show details 04/09/2008

The barrista has the same cologne as you. She smudged it all over the lid of my allongé.

OLIVIA

- Show quoted text -

HENRY0245

Journal entry for September 4, 2008:

Told I smell like a female barrista.

Skipped dinner to sob.

2300mg thorazine.

- Show quoted text -

|

show details 04/09/2008

NEWSFLASH: FEMALE BARRISTA SMELLS LIKE SEXY MAN!

OLIVIA

- Show quoted text -

HENRY0245

show details 04/09/2008

AP Canada: Female impersonator found, arrested, found sexy.

show details 04/09/2008

MIXED MEDIA
works by Clea Haugo

A little Q an A
with Clea Haugo

What are you working on right now?
I am currently working on a series of mixed media portraits of victorian era ladies set in modern day surroundings; these are inspired by family photographs and early photographic techniques such as composites, dioramas and silhouettes.


Tell me about the vintage inspiration.
I incorporate a lot of vintage imagery and text into my drawings, paintings, and illustration--I am especially interested in the aesthetics and graphic design of vintage magazines; the simplicity, honesty, and lack of pretense.


What's your favourite era?
It's hard for me to pick just one favourite era... I am really fascinated by the 1930s--times were desperate and yet people were creative, it was the Jazz Age and people danced and sang and watched musicals! And I think there are similarities to today--the economic depression, markets crashing and job shortages.












*

Clea Haugo has a degree in Art History and Fine Arts from Concordia University, and is also a graduate of Algonquin College's Applied Museum Studies. She's had internships at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, at The Field Museum in Chicago, and at the McCord Museum in Montreal. Clea currently works as a writer/cataloguer for a fine art and antiques auction house. To see more of her work, visit factorycentral.ca. You can also buy up her cards at General 54.

--from Gus--

I have been moving a lot. Lifting heavy boxes all day. Last night I did a load at midnight. Then I filled the bathtub with cold water and got in it. I make it sound instantaneous but it actually took a long time for me to get in it actually.

SPACE! DAD!
by Ian Sullivan Cant
and Melissa Bull

we're all connected
by gabe foreman




(click to enlarge)

E R R A T I C A

by Nick McArthur

I

A Brief Monologue Wherein Our Hero, a Formerly Comatose and Wrongfully Accused Young Patient, Makes Good his Escape from Sayreville County Hospital, Displaying at Once Resourceful Cunning and Multiple Behavioral Symptoms of Having Sustained a Massive Head Injury

Greetings, Mr. Worthington! How are you feeling today? Good? I hope the answer is “good.” My name is Samuel Curtis and as you’ve probably guessed from my stethoscope and wristwatch I am a real doctor gainfully employed at this hospital. I will be attending to your case this afternoon. Please disrobe and lay face-down on the table while I look in this cupboard for a medical chart (i). Help yourself to a paper dress. The lollipops are delicious.

Now before we get started, you may or may not have noticed that aside from my stethoscope and high quality wristwatch I am dressed, let’s say, sort of atypically for a practitioner. This is entirely for your comfort, Mr. Worthington. Recent studies have shown that a doctor’s good health and professional success can be off-putting for some patients, especially those inclined to bouts of jealousy. These jealous bouts can adversely affect a patient’s willingness to open up, inhibiting channels of communication, and ultimately delaying the attainment of a useful diagnosis— sometimes with catastrophic results. According to these studies, a less professional appearance on the part of a practitioner can foster healthy relations between him and his patients. You will notice, for example, that I am not wearing a lab-coat or grasping onto a clipboard. I am dressed in a hospital gown identical to your own— my feet clad in slippers, my face unshaven and legs exposed. These are all tokens of my sympathy for your illness, Mr. Worthington. They are the symbolic evidences of our shared mortality, our mutual vulnerability, our unbreakable bond as diagnostician and diagnosed. Consider them a gesture of equalization. And please, Mr. Worthington, don’t think of me as superior, for we are embarked on this together just as sailors in a squall or as soldiers in a foxhole— companions united until the bitterest of ends. Do you understand what I’m saying, Mr. Worthington? It is pivotal that you trust me and that I in turn trust you. This is the reason that I’m dressed the way I am— as a patient recovering from extensive cerebral hemorrhaging. Can you comprehend all this, Mr. Worthington? Can you understand what I am trying to communicate?

I’ll assume from your speechless terror that you cannot.

Excuse me one second while I lock the door…

Mr. Worthington, I believe I have surmised the reason for your discomfort, and I suppose that I owe you some kind of an apology. Obviously, my endeavors to put you at your ease have failed; my feigned congeniality has failed; these illusions of bad health have failed. You’re as alienated now by my paper gown and slippers as you ever could have been by a three-piece Armani suit. What is worse, Mr. Worthington, is that your attention (I can tell) has by this point been drawn to the upper-leftmost quadrant of my skull. Please do not be alarmed! It is my duty to emphasize, here, that the festering contusion which you believe you see is entirely an illusion— a synthetic wound designed to bring us together; to render us less like doctor and patient and more like two commiserating friends. I can see now what a terrible error in judgment this has been. You are obviously frightened. Perhaps if I were to— how should I say it— unveil for you the methods of my dissemblance— perhaps then your reservations would be assuaged? Please, Mr. Worthington, indulge me for one second:

The area right here resembling exposed skull is, as you will notice on further inspection, nothing but plaster bandages carefully shaped and painted. Go ahead and touch it, Mr. Worthington. Doesn’t it feel real? Doesn’t it feel like genuine exposed skull, throbbing below your fingertips? Please do not be disgusted. Nothing you’re experiencing is real. Those secretions you’re encountering are also synthetic.

And what about the fissure? At the center of the plaster, can you distinguish a long crack? A narrow little cavity? A hole that extends straight down to the interior? If you hazard a second look you will no doubt catch just the faintest glimpse of grayish pink brain, nestled below the surface. It is nothing but smoke and mirrors, Mr. Worthington! A little black paint for the illusion of depth; a little pink polish for the temporal lobe, and voila— a thoroughly convincing cranial fracture! Go ahead and get a pinky in there… that’s right, keep going… keep going… okay, that’s far enough.

Now, Mr. Worthington, have I thoroughly calmed your fears? Are your uncertainties abated? Your questions answered? Your prejudices quelled? As you can tell I am a man of science— abreast in every way of the latest techniques. My approach may be unorthodox, my demeanor may be odd, and I may smell unpleasantly of uncured ham— but I am nevertheless your doctor. And after everything I’ve shown you I hope you’re ready to trust me. I hope that you’re ready to begin the examination and move forward in our friendship. Are you, Mr. Worthington? Are you ready to trust again? Are you ready at last to let yourself be vulnerable?

Mr. Worthington, I have with me a sedative to dispel whatever lingering feelings of anxiety you may possess. I normally wouldn’t insist but— given your initial wariness— this may be the only way for us to secure accurate data. If you trust me as your doctor and have faith in my techniques, I will administer this needle before continuing your examination. If not, I will leave you in peace to locate another practitioner. The decision is yours.

But I should warn you, Mr. Worthington— there is a small chance that the sedative in question will present certain undesirable side-effects. You may feel disoriented. Your mouth might become dry. You may twitch uncontrollably. After a few minutes of these initial effects, you may experience various paranoid hallucinations. Just as an example, you may imagine that I’m stealing your clothes and rifling through your wallet— leaving you here in a state of prostrate nakedness. Possibly, these paranoid hallucinations will occur with such galvanising vividness that you will suddenly feel compelled to punch me in the throat. I urge you to resist this compulsion. It is important you remember that I am your doctor, and that I am only here to help. I am not here to run off with your clothes like some desperate, hunted person. Because I am not a desperate, hunted person. I am a doctor. I am here to help. I am here to help you with your illnesses, right now.

So, what will it be, Mr. Worthington? Will you take the sedative? Have you decided to take my advice? Have you decided to trust me?

---

(i) An excerpt from Mr. Worthington’s medical chart, located several days later by police investigators:

Patrick Worthington

DOB: 10/11/1959

03/14/2016

PHYSICIAN: Samuel “Wallaby” Curtis

PHYSICAL EXAMINATION:

VITALS: Still vital.

SKIN: White.

Head, Eyes, Ears, Nose, and Throat: One of each. Except for the ears. And the eyes. And the… nostrils?

CHEST: Present.

CARDIAC: Super.

BREASTS: In the A range, I suppose.

RECTOVAGINAL: Definitely recto.

UTERINE: This may be the wrong chart.

MENSTRUAL: This is almost definitely the wrong chart.

LABIAL: Where do we keep the other charts? Is there a cabinet for men? By which I don’t mean a cabinet filled with tiny little men, but rather a cabinet filled medical charts designed for regular sized men, with regular sized ailments. And where would we keep such a cabinet, if we had one?

EXTREMITIES: Good.

NEUROLOGIC: Very good.

NODES: Very, very good.

SPINAL: Very, very, very good…

*

Nick McArthur's first book, Short Accounts of Tragic Occurances, was published by DC Books last year. You'll want to read it.

X-FIGHTERS OPENING EVENT

by Dan Svatek

unpublished excerpts
from The Book of Pets

by Eugene Ostashevsky

6. The Mosquito

Puncturing skin

and drawing blood in

makes your mind go ZIZZZ,

But—alas!—

that way you can catch

a severe disease.





14.

Octopus Earl

Hugged the drowning girl.




17.

Three elderly vultures

Purchased new dentures.

Empowered, they carry on

Tearing carrion.




18.

Quick! Maul the koala

Before it holler!





21. The Paper Box

There’s an ox

In my paper box.




L.

Little bunny rabbit

Met a raccoon, rabid.

Now there's no more bunny,

And you think it's funny.






*


Eugene Ostashevsky is a Russian-born American poet from New York City. His books include the poetry collection Iterature and a volume of Russian 1930s writings in translation called OBERIU: An Anthology of Russian Absurdism.

ODE TO BOUDIN
by Kevin Young


You are the chewing gum
of God. You are the reason
I know that skin
is only that, holds
more than it meets.
The heart of you is something
I don't quite get
but don't want to. Even
a fool like me can see
your broken
beauty, the way
out in this world where most
things disappear, driven
into ground, you are ground
already, & like rice
you rise. Drunken deacon,
sausage's half-brother,
jambalaya's baby mama,
you bring me back
to the beginning, to where things live
again. Homemade saviour,
you fed me the day
my father sat under flowers
white as the gloves of pallbearers
tossed on his bier.
Soon, hands will lower him
into ground richer
than even you.

For now, root of all
remembrance, your thick chain
sets me spinning, thinking
of how, like the small,
perfect, possible, silent soul
you spill out
like music, my daddy
dead, or grief,
or both -- afterward his sisters
my aunts dancing
in the yard to a car radio
tuned to zydeco
beneath the pecan trees.





*

From Meatpaper, Your Journal of Meat Culture, Issue 4, Summer 2008.

SPACE! DAD!
by Ian Sullivan Cant
and Melissa Bull

TERRITORY OR A WOMAN LION

by Rick Benson

"Which one of you filthy pigs left this pot in the sink?” Lorie holds up the oatmeal pot that Evan just used to cook our breakfast in.

“Well I did but we’re not finished eating yet,” Evan says, head down.

“You little pigs know better than to leave a dirty pot in my sink. Get over here and clean it.”

Her skin stretches across her face as the tension builds up in her wrinkly body. She looks like a bat. She reminds me of the junkies hanging around Prince George when she gets like that.

“You useless little assholes,” she says. “Every day I have to retrain you, retrain you, retrain you.”

Suddenly my sister Marilyn stands up from the table. We wonder what she’s about to do. Lorie turns around and stares her right in the eye, right. I’ve never seen anything like that before, except for on the animal channel when 2 male lions fight for their territory or a woman lion.

“You know you don’t have to yell like that. We’re just kids,” Marilyn says.

Lorie steps towards Marilyn. Evan and I slide out of our chairs and make a break for it. We hide around the kitchen door.

“What did you say? I thought I heard something,” Lorie says.

My sister puffs out her chest. “I said. You don’t have to talk to us like were animals. We’re just kids.” Lorie takes a few steps closer in reaching distance and extends her pointing finger out to Marilyn’s chest.

“You… you don’t talk to me like that, young lady.” Lorie says. “You don’t have the right to speak to me at all you little bitch.”

I stood for years outside that kitchen to see if my sister would finally tell her how it was. “I just don’t understand why you have to be such a cunt to us all the time,” my sister says.

Lorie lunges in for the moment we’ve all been waiting for. She leans in and shoves both arms hard into my sister’s chest and throws her against the kitchen cupboards. My sister gets up and shakes her hair. She raises her fist, holding it just right like my brother had taught me that day in the shop. She hits Lorie square in the face.

My stepmother flies back a couple steps and crumples against the counter.

Marilyn, red-faced and rushing with adrenaline, looks over at us. “Come on guys,” she says as she catches her breath. “I’ll give you a lift to school.”

Manton, Evan and I hurry outside to my sister’s car. My sister gets in and says nothing. She starts the engine and we begin to pull out the driveway and onto the dirt road.

*

Wanna bowl cut? See Mister Benson about that.