"Why Helen?"

Hey! If you read more than just this blog (gasp!) you might be interested to know that I'm in the latest issue of India's first (and only) queer periodical, Bombay Dost.


It's a three-page spread with pictures, featuring an article I wrote about Bollywood film idol Helen...or at least the mythical version of Helen that I adore. If you're interested in getting a copy, you can order the issue (number two) online.

It looks great and the article is lots of fun, even if you wouldn't know Helen of Burma from Helen of Troy.

Michael Moorcock's "A Cure for Cancer"

Michael Moorcock's novel "A Cure for Cancer" is broken up into small chapters, each one headed with a lurid tabloid-style headline which may or may not relate to the text. The chapters themselves are all of a single tone: laid-back and deadpan and absurdist, featuring dead-eyed characters who do random things to other dead-eyed characters within static sets; there are lots of vehicles and rooms that are an awful lot like the vehicles and rooms which came before.

While the tone remains the same, the direction of the story changes every few paragraphs. Characters will be contemplating something, and then suddenly there will be a bombing or a battle or maybe just the arrival of other characters, and then everybody moves to a vehicle, and then they're someplace else, all in the span of four or five paragraphs. Because of this lack of focus, you never know what's going to happen next; when people get into a vehicle you don't know where they're going until they arrive.

More importantly, even when they DO arrive, you don't know WHY, because the characters are all identical and none of them have any motivation. You cannot tell the hero -- Jerry Cornelius -- apart from anybody else. You have no idea what anybody wants, feels, or believes. The characters just ARE, and when they talk, they speak in a free-flowing semi-witty banter which has all the sense and purpose of two plastic balls rubbing together:

"And how did you leave Europe?" Captain Brunner unbuttoned his uniform jacket to show a yellow shirt of Sea Island Cotton.

"Much as I hope to find it." Jerry pushed his dinner away and took another sip of his Californian Riesling. "It's an uphill struggle."

"Perhaps it always will be, Jerry."

"One door opens. Another closes."

"Isn't that for the best?"

Jerry raised a jet black hand to a jet black face and rubbed his right eye. Captain Brunner smiled.

"The illusion of power," said Jerry. "It sometimes seems too sweet for words."

"Or actions, for that matter."

"Sure."

It's all f*cking like that.

Very few books annoy me to the point where I put them down after 100 pages, but "The Cure for Cancer" is one of them. It seems to me to be Michael Moorcock's great big joke; a combination of moddish flippancy and William S. Burroughs' disdain for linearity. Separately, those things are good enough when done well...but when put together it's like experiencing somebody's really boring dream.

I enjoyed (most of) Moorcock's Elric stories, and I liked his first Jerry Cornelius book well enough ("The Final Programme"), but "A Cure for Cancer" is so wanky and featureless that I fear I'm "off" Moorcock. There are so many great authors out there...do I really want to spend time and money on the guy who wrote this awful book?

Well, yes. Because I think I recognize what Moorcock was trying to do, and I suppose I respect him for at least trying. I'm also sure there are people out there who love "A Cure for Cancer," just as there are people who love William S. Burroughs.

So I'll give him another chance. But I'm warning you, Michael, that the next one had better be good...

A Street Person's To-Do List

For a few weeks this summer my workplace has had to deal with a street person's leftovers. This person would sleep overnight in one of our entry ways, then leave behind a bizarre collection of odds-and-ends the next day, including syringes.

Some of his leftovers have been bizarre -- children's toys, a broken stereo, a sleeping bag -- but once I discovered a backpack, and in it a "To-Do" diary with some very interesting notations.



His writing is difficult to decipher. Here's page one:

I NEED DO THE DO
STOP
DO NO HARME
BI BI
LEET GOOD

DO
CALL SHARON
MOM

Page two is labeled "TO DO" and says:

1 DENTOS AP
RENT TO INTENT LETTER
1 2 3

FIND OUT WHAT NEEDS TO BE DON AT
1 TAX
2 WELFARE
GET RENT
PHONE BANK

400 WATS + iPOD
99 HDML DVD
49 5.100
B: DVD
79 200WAT

Page three is one-sided:

START TO SLOW DOWN AND STOP
M L

AT 5:00 I WAS DOWN TOWN AT MARKET IN KIT
$120 PAND FOR RED PUMPKIN
7 DID IN IN THE ROW
8 WALKT HOME

10 TO 2:00
1 AM

Page four is most interesting:

CALL MOM
GOOD DAY TO DAY
TRY 3 OR
$10: OOW AT LARAL STREET

TO DO
GET NUMBER FOR METH
CLINICK WOOD STACK
BUS FAIR
$20 DOLLERS

NIKKEY IS WITH ROS AND ALL I SENS IS NEGATIV MY LAIF IS OFF THE HOOK

And finally, page five:

I CANT US
I CANT SEE YOU MONBER
HEPUT

I suppose this is a glimpse at the functionality of a drug-addicted, partially literate person. He hasn't come around lately.

PS: As much as my workmates hated having to dispose of his garbage, what they objected to most were the syringes. This annoyed me too, but then I realized that they were all prominently displayed...almost laid out deliberately in front of his former possessions.

Suddenly it occurred to me: what is a street person going to do with used syringes? They aren't going to carry "sharpie" boxes around which would advertise to the world that they're injecting drugs. When they want to dispose of a needle, I think their only options are to throw it in a garbage or hide it in something until they're far away.

I don't know about you, but I'd much rather the syringes be immediately visible...I don't want to pick up somebody's old backpack or pull out a garbage bag and get a needle in the hand. I wonder if, by leaving their needles where everybody can see them, these street people are being CONSIDERATE?

"Boxcar"

Another odd little video that I finally finished this morning: "Boxcar."



What do you do when your neighbour parks his junker car on your front lawn? You turn it into a constructive project.

I took my camera and tripod and filmed every piece of the car that I considered to be interesting. Since the horizon was rarely level with the car itself, I made a decision to always orient the camera based on the car's surfaces, which I think was a mistake: it causes the surrounding surfaces (roads, hedges, etc.) to appear skewed in a distracting sort of way.

Eventually I got the hang of avoiding reflections, and I also realized that late-afternoon light is very pretty when it bounces off metal.

My original idea was to mix the video clips with painstakingly hand-edited stills of the car, to make it look like a cartoon in the midst of a live landscape. Then I decided that it was a "too-tricky-clever" idea without any real point.

And since I was reading Iain Sinclair's "Lights Out for the Territory," I found myself getting more interested in the style of a film he frequently wrote about: "London" by Patrick Keiller. I hadn't seen the film at the time, but Sinclair's description of droll narration, motionless camera, and no-nonsense cuts was subconsciously inspiring...I was also thinking about Peter Greenaway's "The Falls." By referencing objects in the clips themselves, I wrote a little story and tried to find images that reflected the mood (rather than the content) of the clips.

I intercut with black frames to break the monotony of the images, and I threw a deliberately glitchy shot into the middle for the same reason. The background sounds are the ones from the clips themselves, with rougher sounds (like busses) removed and lots of denoising to compensate for my camera's crappy mic.

I hope you like it!

Neat Things I Found in My Scrapbox

One of the best things about moving is that I get to rediscover (and often throw out) all the cool things I've been pack-ratting during the last few decades. These things gradually accumulate in a box in the basement, bravely resisting spiders and dampness and being slowly forgotten...until the next move.

Here are some of the neat things I found in my scrapbox this time. At the very least they might add something to the growing internet presence of '90s small-press publishers and authors.

Issue #2 of "Zooomba!" This was an 8 1/2 x 11 'zine produced by Lisa Schwartzman in Waterloo during the early '90s. This issue doesn't have a date on it but I assume it's from 1994. In charming fashion, the cover is a photograph of a tapeworm being pulled from a child's bum.

Lisa was one of the members of "Philler," a CKMS sketch-comedy and audio-weirdness program from 1993 to 1994. Her style of humour was totally left-field...not so much "wacky" as "what the HELL?" She was extremely talented and I'm thrilled to see she's making YouTube videos.

Included in this issue of Zooomba: interviews with King Cobb Steelie, Gwar, and Consolodated. It also contains a brief dream recounted by late CKMS cult-peronality Eddy Schneider: "I had a dream about Groucho Marx last night. Something about duck soup. Pop goes the weasel."

PS: Eddy Schneider was unique. He released three improvisational cassettes of him endlessly riffing on a theme...singing the Star Wars theme for half an hour, for instance. His most beloved cassette was an extended one-man impersonation of race-track noises, which he made by shouting "Vrum-bum-bum-bum!" into a microphone that he virtually swallowed.

Someday I'll put some of his stuff online. You will be amazed.

Volumes 1 and 2 of "Phoenix." Produced and financed by the University of Waterloo's Arts Student Union, this was a nice (but somewhat shortlived) chapbook edited by Shirley Moore, Tamara Knezic, Clint Turcotte, and Lindsay Stewart. I later got to know Clint through the English Society, and I became the sidekick to his "Captain Arts" superhero persona. Lindsay is still very much active in the K/W arts scene...I was always blown away by his contributions to writers workshops and his "Slowpoke" readings at the old Purple Turtle cafe.

"Vampires or Gods?" by William Meyers. I was quite intrigued by Meyer's independent "III Publishing" company. He tended to print books with an illuminatus/conspiracy angle and I was never sure how seriously he took it all. This particular book's thesis is that the mythical immortal heroes -- Osiris, Dionysus, Hercules, Krishna, Quetzalcoatl -- were actually vampires. No, really.

Like all the III Publishing books this one is lovingly produced, but the cover DOES show a chubby man eating grapes in front of a bath towel, which is a bit of a step down in terms of quality and taste.


"The Standing Stone" Issue Number One, October 1990. This 'zine was devoted to fantasy and horror and was published by Gordon R. Menzies. It lasted at least three issues, but this is the only one I have, because it contains a pretty childish story by yours truly. It also has a poem by ubiquitous 'zine contributor John Grey, and a piece of art by Clay Boutilier (with whom I was publishing "Lost Magazine" at the time).

Issues Zero, One, and Two of "The Potassium Revue," 1990-1991. Author of "Virgintooth" (a copy of which is also in my scrapbox), this was Mark S. Ivanhoe's text-only collection of musings and journal entries. Neat stuff, very personal...where is he now?


"Zoomers," a collection of "short sharp fiction" produced by Duncan McLean's Clocktower Press in 1990. Duncan was one of my favourite small-press writer at the time. His fiction was intensely Scottish and entirely unique to my virgin ears. It appears that he's still in the writing game.

This issue also has fiction by Stefano Benni, Jim Ferguson, Gordon Legge, James Meek, and Sandy Watson.

"Demon Colors" by Gary Lynn Morton, a hand-printed and stapled book of stories and poems, 1991?

When I edited "Lost," Gary was a constant submittor. He'd send me enormous manuscripts -- all of which I still have in my "letterbox" -- and his style was a mix of straightforward prose and bizarre hallucination. Best of all, his detailed cover letters were entertaining and revealed the processes behind each work...what inspired him, why he wrote it, how his job was going.

I really miss Gary and I wonder what he's doing now. Online searches show that he has continued to submit stories to small press 'zines, but I can't find a central repository of information.

"Rantings" by Jim McAuliffe, a chapbook of fiction and poetry, 1992. I met Jim when I started attending workshops and readings in Kitchener and Waterloo, and I still see him around from time to time...he was still organizing local readings just a few years ago, at least. Jim's style was brash and ballsy and I hope he's still writing...

A 1993 letter from Vladimir Orlev, containing photographs of people with scribbled Russian writing on the back. I've never solved this mystery, but I think he thought that "Lost Magazine" had something to do with missing persons. Strange that he'd send this all the way from Velgograd.


"Waters Boil Bloody" and "1066" by William P. Robertson, two chapbooks of poetry from 1990 and 1992. The cover of "Waters Boil Bloody" appears to feature William being attacked by a sturgeon, which he is about to kill with a large hunting knife.

Many issues of "Radio Void," a great big 'zine from Providence RI. For many small publishers this was the 'zine to aspire to: classy, fun, professional. It's where the two-headed small-press hydra of Christopher Pierson and John Grey combined to create something of genius. I don't know what eventually happened to it.

Issues two and three of "A Theater of Blood," edited by C. Darren Butler. His own work seems to have stopped around 1993, but this was an excellent horror/speculative fiction 'zine while it lasted.

Issue one of "The Stake," from III Publishing. Full-colour cover! Weird fiction! Book reviews by J. G. Eccarius, Mr. "Last Days of Christ the Vampire" himself!

Volume Four of "The Otherside," the University of Waterloo's English Society publication from 1991. Featuring stories and poems by the usual suspects (Clint Turcotte, Lindsay Stewart, Jim McAuliffe) and some stuff by...me! I was so excited by this, I felt legitimized.

"Past Tense" by Irvine Welsh, a 1992 Clocktower Press chapbook of "four stories from a novel."

Yes, it's by THAT Irvine Welsh. It may have been the first thing he ever published, selections from the upcoming "Trainspotting." I wonder if this is worth a million bucks now?


"Reaper's Harvest" Number Two, a big (but somewhat thin) 1990 'zine of over-the-top horror. I think I got this through the usual magazine-trade method. It was edited by David F. Kramer (who appears to be very much in action) and featured a mascot named "Corpsie the Clown."

A big letter "A," number 783 of 1500. One day in 1994, the University of Waterloo students arrived on campus to find these EVERYWHERE. There were literally 1500 of them, enough for every hallway, bulletin board, classroom, and tunnel.

There were lots of theories -- and a bit of an ecological witch-hunt -- but I seem to remember that the final answer (whispered to me by a friend of the anonymous perpetrator) was that it was a celebration of a hard-won grade, though more likely a nifty bit of guerrilla art.


Lots of English Society posters featuring headless teddy bears, assassination photos, and jailed ostriches. We were a bit sick.

Mindsculpture gig posters, stuff from writer's workshops, issues of the mysterious Pauline Poisonous' "Stressed Out" 'zine, some truly horrific work from Full Force Frank (including murder-badges)...there's lots more but this post is long enough already.

What's in YOUR scrapboxes? Anything fun, strange, exciting?

SHIRTS!

Looking at this advertisement you might be excused for thinking that it was about shirts.


Silly you!

Starting sometime during 1928, various newspapers started advertising in The New Yorker, but they never said anything as direct or uncouth as "buy our paper." No, they'd engage in HUGE acts of misdirection, supposedly to prove the sophistication of their style and the class of their readership, before doing a 180 at the end and saying that if YOU want to be equally sophisticated and classy, you should read their periodical.

This "Shirts" advertisement is the epitome of this style, partly because of the lengths it goes to before delivering the pitch, but also because of the striking -- almost hypnotic -- prose. I'm sad that this sort of marketing copy has long since faded from our magazines, but in fond remembrance here is the advertisement in full.

Most of us, who casually glance at the slight bit of shirt-front which spreads itself across the modest open space of the average man's waistcoat, are not familiar with the fact that once upon a time the very, very meticulous dresser wore a delicate, full-bodied affair of silk or fine linen touched off with quite ladylike embroidered collar and cuffs. However, in those days, a shirt was a poem...today it is something very practical, to be owned by the dozen, with vast consideration accorded variety. Millions of New York men are constantly purchasing shirts...and the smarter the man the wider his collection. It includes everything from well-fitting white oxfords, broadcloths and linens to the refreshing single tones of blue, tan, green, oyster, and, quite naturally, the modest stripings with nicely tailored collars to match...and the dapper dicky bosom with dashing cross-stripes. Indeed, the great shirt makers, and their retail outlets, have left no stone unturned to the end that all shall be bountifully supplied, especially the type of man who reads The Sun...for he purchases freely, and perhaps extravagantly. He values the peaks and valleys of Style and reads The Sun for ripe and authentic news, whether it applies to shirts or ships, boots or baseball, society or shillings.

"The Man Who Will Come"

I didn't know at the time that the hotel clerk was Rob's messenger. If I'd realized I would have paid more attention to him, gotten a better look at him, but when he gave me the letter I thought he was just doing his job. I was living a different life back then.

In my room I took out the letter and read it. It was a short thing, written on stationary from a more expensive hotel than I had been placed in. "Dear Laurie," it said, "I have to talk to you about something important. Meet me at the cafe at six o'clock."

I went to the cafe and he didn't show up, so the next day I went back to the convention hall where we'd met and I drank water in the foyer and expected to see him walk past. Maybe the crowd was too large. I missed both of my seminars and I was angry.

I didn't understand what had happened until I saw the police cars outside his hotel. I thought he'd been arrested, but there was nothing about him in the paper the next day. If they'd caught him they would have reported it. I knew then that he was still alive.

The conference was over and my return flight was booked, so I left a message with the maid and rode the shuttle bus to the airport. I hoped to see Rob on the street or hear about him on the radio. Rob wasn't at the airport; I didn't know if he lived in the city or if he was just there for the conference, or if the conference itself was just a secret way for him to meet people in an unlikely setting.

At home I unpacked my bags and I couldn't find his letter. Either I'd forgotten to pack it or the airport security had removed it.

I pretended to live my old life because there was nothing to do but wait. I had the children on the weekends and they'd either sit in front of the TV or go out with their friends. When Chad wrestled Dino and Dino's wrist got broken I knew for sure that my old life had been a mistake.

The nurse at the hospital said I had pretty fingernails.

Rob was unable to contact me again. He'd taken a chance by telling me about his secret life in the convention hall. Obviously he'd found no other way to meet me since then. I didn't feel angry anymore, I understood his problem.

I pieced together his travels by reading the newspaper. He'd escaped a house fire. He'd witnessed a miraculous rescue, though in the article he claimed to have no CPR training, which must have been a lie. He may have been in the crowd at the opening of a highway. His pictures were blurry and his last name always changed, but Rob was still doing his secret job. I was thrilled.

Now, in my new life, I sit on the apartment steps and look out at the world that Rob still lives in. I don't do anything else because I don't know what to do. I know he'll come eventually, when he's able.

Russell T. Davies, The Writer's Tale, Doctor Who, Bob and Rose

I like the new Doctor Who series. Sometimes I even love it. At other times, however, I hate it. And the things I both love AND hate usually come down to the show's writer, producer, and script editor, Russell T. Davies.

He's written some of the worst episodes of the show, and many of his more bombastic ideas have come under criticism, but there's no doubt that the actual TONE of the show -- that is, the underlying approach and feel of every single thing that happens -- is pretty darn brilliant...and Davies controls that portion of the program with an iron fist. And when he actually pulls off one of his more audacious stunts, you can only sit in awe.

If I simply loved or hated him I'd have had no reason to buy "The Writer's Tale", but I was SO CURIOUS to know what goes on in his head...so after considerable delay and hardship (not to mention cost), I managed to track it down.

It's a collection of emails exchanged between Davies and journalist Benjamin Cook, all written during the development of Doctor Who's fourth season. Much of the book is Davies agonizing about scriptwriting. Responsible for the program's highest-profile episodes, Davies is under immense pressure to come through with scripts that are on budget and on time, but he simply can't bring himself to write until the deadline has almost passed. In the meantime he's responsible for editing -- and often completely rewriting -- the scripts for other episodes, and also overseeing the show in general.

"The Writer's Tale" is an enlightening book in many different ways. Fans wondering why certain decisions were made can get an uncomfortably close look at Davies' scriptwriting process, from the first collection of ideas -- usually gags or momentous climaxes -- to the filming and editing. You begin to understand how those wonderful and stupid moments made it into the show.

But more importantly, the book is simply about HOW RUSSELL T. DAVIES WRITES, regardless of the fact that he's writing "Doctor Who." Benjamin Cook is constantly asking probing questions -- "How do you make the audience care about a character?" and "How do you write dialog that sounds natural?" -- and instead of replying with pithy (but vague and useless) writer's workshop responses, Davies REALLY, REALLY EXPLAINS IT. He positively AGONIZES over the answers. I've come away learning more about the actual process of writing than I ever got from those "Creative Writing" courses I took in university.

It helps that Davies writes excellent emails. They're essays in themselves, and usually very funny...in fact, they come out sounding like the characters in "Doctor Who" itself. He's also an accomplished illustrator, so the book is full of the sketches he drew of various scenes while he was writing the scripts.

Throughout the book, Davies constantly refers to the way he wrote his other shows, the ones before "Doctor Who." Curious, I went to the local video store to see if they had anything...and I was fortunate to stumble across "Bob and Rose."


Holy cow, this show is amazing.

Besides the great actors and straight-forward direction, you've got a truly original storyline: a woman (Rose) who is dissatisfied with her long-term boyfriend ends up befriending a gay man (Bob) who is equally dissatisfied with his mating prospects. Spontaneously, and almost accidentally, the two of them have sex...

...and all hell breaks loose. Bob has a quietly insane female friend who sabotages all of his promising relationships, for fear that he'll care about somebody other than her. Rose breaks up with her boyfriend and decides not to move away from home, where her mother has just invited a decidedly shady man to live. Most importantly, Bob is gay...but he sees something in Rose that is more attractive and offers more kinship than anybody else he's ever met. How can Rose deal with his ambivalence? How can their friends deal with the fact that they're going out? Will Bob's rabidly gay-activist mother accept that her son, for whom she's thrown herself into the cause of worldwide equality for all homosexuals, is...gasp...dating a woman?

The show is ingenious. Davies simply knows how people behave, and the actors portray these behaviours to perfection. He has a knack for perfect-pitch dialogue and zinger pronouncements that suddenly sneak up on you and make you (literally) shout "HOLY SH*T!" It has the perfect balance of comedy and drama, sociology and artifice...it is in my eyes, as of the third episode at least, The Best TV Show I've Ever Seen. Ever.

So if you know something about Davies' personality then you understand the problem with "Doctor Who." He loves the science fiction, but he also loves people and reality and the everyday stuff that all of us do. In "Doctor Who" he feels a need to cram all that stuff into 45-minute episodes that somehow gel...sometimes they do, and sometimes you end up with aliens that fart.

It doesn't help, too, that Davies seems to be surrounded by "yes men" who are too in awe (or afraid) to tell him when something DOESN'T work. He acknowledges this a bit in "The Writer's Tale," and coupled with the ridiculous workload and responsibility that the show saddles him with...well, it's no wonder that he's quitting now.

Previous to reading the book and watching "Bob and Rose," I was just happy that Russell T. Davies would no longer write for "Doctor Who," leaving behind a legacy, a fan base, and a story arc that a more disciplined writer (Steven Moffat) could inherit.

I'm still happy about that...but now I'm eager to see what Davies comes up with next. I think that with a less schizophrenic format and a brand new start, he could come up with something amazing. And now that he's famous, maybe shows like "Bob and Rose" will be appreciated.

PS: The show's funniest moment so far. The desperate female pack go to a straight bar in order to pick up men. One of the women yells "There's a man in a rabbit suit!" A ridiculous man on the dancefloor -- who is indeed wearing a scruffy rabbit suit -- pouts at the women and flips his floppy ear.

All of them go "Awwwwwwwwwww," as though this were just the cutest thing.


Well, you have to see it yourself. Like so many moments in the show, it speaks volumes in a simple, ridiculous scene.

Words, Words, Words

Workmate Henning sent me this video today. It's word-geek and lexicographer Erin McKean pondering the future of "The Dictionary."



It's an amazingly fun talk so you should really watch it, but if you want a brief summary...well, she feels that our concept of "dictionary" is still rooted in a Victorian concept of "appropriate words." This concept started because there simply weren't enough resources to include EVERYTHING in the dictionary. She resents being put into a "traffic cop" role when maintaining a dictionary, and instead looks forward to the day when dictionaries are well-sourced repositories of all available words...not just the words considered dictionary-worthy.

It's a compelling argument and a very current one. Now that we can collaboratively store an essentially unlimited amount of information in forums and wikis all over the world, it makes sense to question whether our information-collection methods are outdated or pointlessly constrained.

But I do find that this discussion tends to overlook something very simple: when people consult a repository of information, what exactly are they looking for? Do they want access to everything, or are they only looking for a subset? And as long as people are looking for a subset we will always require "traffic cops," whether during the information-collection process or during information retrieval.

My objection is that dictionaries are often NOT consulted in order to learn about every word, everywhere, through all times. When I consult a dictionary I simply want to know how to spell a word I already know, and learn the conditions of its use, and perhaps pick up a few synonyms. I need this information because I want to communicate my ideas in as specific and unambiguous a way as possible, especially if I'm writing an essay or -- in my job -- a technical document.

When I consult a dictionary, I am not concerned about interesting regional words or slight differences in spelling ...I want to know what the STANDARD supposedly is for its spelling and usage, so that I can be relatively sure that the reader will understand what I've written...without misunderstanding a word, needing to puzzle over its usage, or having to look it up in the same place I did.

There are obviously places where word standards are less important, sometimes to extreme degrees -- creative writing, emails, texting, blank verse -- but dictionaries do not ONLY serve those situations. Likewise -- to use another one of McKean's examples -- you don't always consult a dictionary because you're just interested in exploring words.

Sometimes you need to know what the STANDARD for the word is. For that you use your style guide, your guide of specific technical terminology...or your dictionary. And for that you also need a "traffic cop."

I think McKean is getting excited about possibilities without stopping to consider the usage. There's certainly a place for a Total Word Repository, but I argue that such a thing is a different concept from the sort of dictionary *I* find useful (except in less formal situations when such a word repository WOULD be useful). I have no problems with viewing language as an organic, ever-changing construct -- that's why we revise dictionaries, after all -- but there are still situations where we require standards within ANY collection as long as it is to be a useful reference -- Wikipedia, a bug list, a technical forum, a book on art history -- and I therefore doubt that a complete, constantly-changing collection of ANYTHING is useful in all (or even most) situations.

"Max and Nightingale"

The party is finally picking up. The smiles have become manic, toothy, like the grins of boxing fans anticipating a particularly good fight, not caring who wins as long as they can see the blood. It's going to be that kind of night.

My stomach feels like it has fallen off of Blondie's balcony. I've been a reluctant visitor at enough of these parties to make an educated guess about the sudden change in attitude; either there's been a newsworthy tragedy which I haven't been informed of yet -- an assassination, an earthquake, a bombing -- or a pathetic and volatile guest is about to arrive.

None of these prospects interest me and I consider finding a quieter place to sit or -- better yet -- escaping the party entirely, but a slumming debutante has blocked the room's exit and is attacking the radio with her shoe. An elderly patron wearing a red bozo wig has sunk down into the couch and is being pulled apart from various directions, apparently unable to stand. Everybody is flaunting their drinks, and most of them are attractive, clean, stylish, and well-to-do. Most of them I know by reputation, some of them by name, but none of them intimately.

I just wish I could find Max, really.

Senator Worthy arrives, changing my corner seat from a cozy retreat into a fetid cul de sac. His toothy odour and desperate need for attention make me edgy. I know the dangers of encouraging him.

"Nightingale just phoned and he's bringing his girl," he says to me, hoping for a reaction. I give him my wide-eyed look of the stupid and unconcerned.

The Senator is not a nice man but he falls short of outright evil. The early-evening grapevine said that the party would be relying on HIM for entertainment -- which is why the other guests have been feeding him drinks all night -- but he has always been a mediocre fiend, trying hard to be offensive but lacking variety, doing the same things all the time. Like many of our elected alcoholics, Senator Worthy doesn't grow tired of his crude come-ons and crass jokes and late-night penis-waving.

But he was invited for a reason. Blondie doesn't pay professionals to sing or tap-dance or burlesque at her parties, she just invites selections of deviants, agitators, and the subtly drug-addicted. Part of the fun is guessing which one will go furthest over the edge, with bets on who's first.

Thrill-seekers and urban aristocrats enjoy this sort of thing. I personally don't want to be thrilled tonight, especially not by Nightingale and his new girl. I shouldn't have come at all and I certainly shouldn't have stayed. I'll never find Max, especially if he doesn't want to be found, and if I did find him I'm not sure exactly what I'd say and he'd probably run away anyway.

The static from the radio and the smell of the Senator's teeth is making my headache worse, so I excuse myself and accidentally spill my scotch on some anonymous person's shirt. "Whoa, Tiger!" yells the Senator, toasting me, grinning.

Out on Blondie's balcony the wind is vicious and a necessary tonic. I can't avoid the anticipatory chatter about Nightingale's girl, but by pleading feminine weakness I manage to secure a seat near the far end of the railing, close to the edge of the crowd. I huddle down, hug myself a bit, look out over the city. I can see three rooftop orchestras without even turning my head.

A new voice, sweet and naive and slightly twangy, says what the other guests are too tactful to mention. "Seriously, how do they do it? How do the two of them..." She stops, shy. She's a little lady who still smells of the countryside. Every party needs a farm-fresh waif the same way it needs a beast, a hero, and a cynic. I'm not sure which one I am at the moment.

The Short Actor grabs the girl's thigh and he promises a demonstration. "Want to know how they do it? Abby, darling, put your leg out like this and then lean back a bit. Pretend you're a hooch dancer--"

"Hey!" laughs a gaudy woman, feigning offense, but the Short Actor will not be distracted . He squashes the little farm girl against the railing and tries to force her head back. "Now pretend you're lying on the floor, prone, and put this bottle between your legs--"

"Don't, I don't wanna--"

"--and I'll be Nightingale moving in for the kill..."

"STOP it!"

She's not having fun. Tonight's hero, I come out of my huddle and say "Hey Dick, give the kid a break. She's never been to Coney Island. She's not your kind of girl."

He's surprised. There's a mixture of relief and disappointment in the air, but mostly the latter. He says, "I should be teaching YOU how to screw like a freak. Maybe you can get your boyfriend back."

The farm girl has slipped off the railing and darted back inside, so the Short Actor takes some of his pent-up aggression out on me. Among other things he says I'm too "loose" to be ruining other people's fun, says I make a living out of other people's misery, calls me a stuck-up elitist who needs a REAL man. He recites a brief speech about fallen women that I think I remember from one of his plays -- one I reviewed negatively -- then finishes with an absolute soliloquy of gossip: Blondie and I, Max and I, Nightingale and I. "You're giving ME a puritanical line about the sacred virtue of womankind?" He hisses. "That's rich."

Shrugs all around. I'm not interested in fighting with him. He makes a mocking evil eye sign that belies his upbringing and goes back inside, and after a respectable pause I follow.

I weave my way through the staring crowd, trying half-heartedly to corner Max. Everybody saw him walk through a door just a few seconds ago.

In the kitchen, Blondie's coloured maid is standing in my way and restocking the icebox, her single chore for the night. I ask her if she's seen Max lately and she shakes her head, frustrated, because I've asked her this already. She's never liked me, but I don't really believe she's ever liked anybody, at least not the sort of people I know.

Liquor bottles have completely taken over the kitchen. The abandoned diversions of the Blondie household are sitting atop a forgotten shelf: decks of cards, crossword puzzles, a horse-racing game, the dusty mah-jongh set. What happened to these normal pastimes, I wonder? Blondie and Max had decided that playing bridge wasn't exciting enough, long before I ever met them.

"Are we horrible?" I ask the maid. I don't know what I'm expecting to hear. "Me, Blondie's friends, her party guests. Are we horrible people?"

"I dunno," says the maid, muffled, her head in the icebox. "It's not my business."

I agree. It's none of my business either.

I hear a chorus of cheers; Nightingale and his girl have finally arrived. I hear Max out there too, suddenly audible after all this time, welcoming the newcomers, shushing the girl who's still trying to break the radio. Blondie laughs and makes kissy noises and asks them what they'd like to drink. With my head against the door I listen to Max and Nightingale, two men talking about booze and girl trouble. They're only inches away.

"Excuse me," says the maid, pushing her way past me, and she whispers something that I'm sure is uncomplimentary.

Merry Christmas!

There is an evil air which surrounds the holidays. A partridge, exposed to it, would die.

My day is finished, I am rushing under a weight of dark clouds and snow. There isn't enough work to do now and I find it painfully difficult to pass the time. The questions I ask go unanswered because the world is losing its people; only the old and sick are left behind to mingle with the busy, and none of them have time to gather together. They've closed the doors to their homes and offices. They have no plans.

My own plans have changed to include foresight; I must find my way home, I must eat, I must wake up again tomorrow. In my dreams I see a wind-blurred deadline which refuses to be observed, but just as stubbornly refuses to be moved. When it arrives it will catch me standing there, exhausted, mouth hanging open. It will knock the tree over.

At home I can't bear to do the cleaning. Instead I stand at the glass and watch hills around me blow apart and become smoking-white planes. This vacation is a time for losing things: a friendship, a soul, a pair of beautifully-knitted mittens. These things are replaced by a freeze which comes through the bottom and sides of the kitchen door.

There is an evil air to the holidays, a pressure, a losing. I'll say something nice to the mailman when he comes back.

We and Kyle

We travel north to study the newly discovered insects. Kyle Borrowman is assigned to us, and we respect him because the dossier says that he can survive. He's not an entomologist, of course -- there's enough of us here already! -- but he understands how to climb hilltops, and how to find fresh water on the top of the hilltops he climbs, and he can also make a special kind of dirt-food that is edible if not always tasty. Kyle Borrowman has ensured the survival some very important people, says the dossier that we pass around, disinterested. OUR survival is not the first thing on our minds.

We have never learned to preserve anything larger than a bug. We're accustomed to sterile conditions where food and water are always available, sometimes fed to us automatically when we're busy. Apparently, for this journey, we NEED somebody like Kyle Borrowman, and since most creatures are in some way dependent on others we like to imagine that he needs us too.

We're not sure of that, we've done no studies.

The north is a difficult environment and our research skills are not very useful. As we travel, Kyle Borrowman saves each of us in turn from a rock slide, a flood, and an infection which spreads from foot to shin. Doctor Feeler almost dies from a snake that she tries to investigate with a stick. Borrowman sucks the venom out and says crude things about her leg.

In light of this we recognize our collective debt to him, and we decide unanimously that Kyle Borrowman is the only member of our party who actually deserves a name. He disagrees, brandishing his handmade axe, and says we're being darn foolish. If we don't stop doing this stuff, he says, he'll go back south and leave us here alone, damnit.

We reclaim our names and we acknowledge that there are certain things we do not understand. Kyle Borrowman approves and offers us tobacco, which we decline because it hurts our lungs. He says "What a bunch of pussies!" and spits.

---

Researchers are too weak and impractical to survive in the wilderness. Even amongst peers we have trouble with things like public transportation and grocery stores. Some of us have gotten lost in hallways while trying to locate the researchers from other facilities, and even stairways of more than one storey give us trouble.

Kyle Borrowman tends us with a down-home type of tough love; he's dependable but sometimes frightening. The songs he sings have uncouth lyrics and he uses the fat of still-living mammals to waterproof his canoe. Every time we set up our campsite he stores our food high up in a tree, and then he hollers that he's not coming back down to give us any until one of us manages to hit him with a rock. He's the only one who's really good at throwing rocks. Maybe this is his way of encouraging us to try new things. We are never sure when Kyle Borrowman is joking or when he is trying to tough-love us.

He has a sensitive side that is not always apparent. During restful times he listens to waves sloshing against the shore, and he says they remind him of his home by the Lake Of No Name. We, by comparison, listen to the quiet buzzing of microscopic wings in our specimen jars. Kyle says that small things like that are not worth listening to, he is more interested in The Large.

Our camp is scattered with jars made of crystal, and each jar holds something that's very, very small. In a rare mood, far north of the timberline, Kyle Borrowman asks us what all of our junk is for and we don't really know what to say, but after a bit of discussion we try to explain it to him.

"Studying the insects is exciting," one of us says, and the rest of us applaud him. When Kyle Borrowman looks unimpressed, Doctor Feeler reads him some untranslated excerpts from her research notes. "This is what we do," she says. "We study."

Kyle Borrowman doesn't care. "That's fine," he says, "but can any of you do this?" He takes off his shirt and flexes his biceps, which are so massive and hairy that we can't believe we have similar biceps of our own. He turns around and flexes again so we can see him from the back. Doctor Feeler says that she doesn't think she could do such things personally, but she can't speak for anybody else. We agree.

His laugh is meaty, like his smell and like his hands. We can only keep his attention for a short time and we worry that he'll grow bored of us, forget the contract he signed, and leave us in the north to die.

He goes hunting with his axe and brings back rabbits, otters, and bears, all dead. He can drag a monster home by its antlers without sweating more than he usually does. We appreciate the effort but we insist on eating dry rations out of ziplocked bags, and he grunts, annoyed. He has begun brewing his own beer with cheesecloth, tinfoil, and tiny pieces of moss. Sometimes he looks at us and we wonder what he's thinking about.

---

It becomes terribly hot and the trees are poor shelter. Our little crystal jars reflect light-beams. Our tents steam, the beer ferments with a rich dungy odour, Kyle Borrowman sits drunk and naked on the rock which he calls his throne.

His torso is covered with mosquitoes but this doesn't seem to bother him. When he stares at Doctor Feeler like a lascivious killer, her sunburned face turns perceptively redder and she devotes extra study to her insects.

Our anxiety increases as the heat gets worse. Unable to look directly at our bright thermometers, we estimate the temperature from the oscillations of midges. The radio transmitter no longer works, but on cloudless nights we can hear German opera, and Doctor Pop sings along.

We run out of dry rations but we are afraid to ask Kyle Borrowman to bring some down from the tree-top, which for days has been surrounded by eagerly-fighting crows. We have heard about hunger before, but we have never known it personally. This is not within our realm of research and it is experienced without first setting down a proposal.

"So," says Kyle Borrowman one morning, addressing Doctor Feeler as usual, "you ever DONE IT with a mountain man?"

Nobody answers. It's terribly hot and we stare at our ragged shoes.

He points to the mound of mosquitoes on his crotch. "We gotta get it on."

That night we gather in Doctor Feeler's tent and hold a vote: we will no longer answer any questions which make us feel uncomfortable. We pack the delirious Doctor Pop in formaldehyde put him to bed, and in the morning he dies.

Our weaknesses infuriate Kyle Borrowman, who rarely stirs from his mosquito blanket. He says that Doctor Pop was a useless man who should have drank more fluids to prevent dehydration. He threatens us in a fuzzy voice and his threats, as always, are effective. By simply sitting on his throne and waving his axe around, Kyle Borrowman is more powerful than the rest of us combined.

That afternoon the heat breaks and a downpour floods our tents. We run to Kyle Borrowman for help and we discover that he is gone, and so is Doctor Feeler. She left her notes behind.

---

One day our savage children see an equally wild old woman stalking our burrow. The woman's lab coat is patched with fur and she is holding a knife in her hands, something tough and made of bone. Instead of fighting, our children jump and holler, and eventually the old woman goes away.

Set

On the final day of shooting, the director notices me and he has a revelation: my eyes are perfect, he says, and so is my bearing, as one who has served proudly and remained below the status she has deserved. I will be elevated, he tells me. I will play the part.

A headdress is prepared. Against my wishes I am placed before a mirror to practice my lines. My own replacement, a new servant, whispers to me what I already know: this is blasphemous, it is against the rules and the customs. I must not do this thing, even in jest. I must not appear without makeup. I must not speak in my own voice.

The director is busy with his other duties. During rehearsals the actors look at me with a mixture of hostility and pity. They know I can't be allowed to do this. So do I.

The next morning I lie in bed, listening. The headdress has been quietly removed from my room. Somebody else is saying my lines in the courtyard.

A Crash in Tin Pan Alley

Lest anyone assume that today's pop songs are any more contrived than those of yesteryear, here are some excerpts from John Ogden Whedon's fictional story "A Crash in Tin Pan Alley," which appeared in the April 6, 1929 issue of The New Yorker.

It makes some comments about popular songs that still apply today, but it does contain some interesting specifics about songwriting in that era.

"We'll write a song for the summer trade," Louis said. "Something soft and dreamy that bands can play in the park under the moonlight."

Sid caught fire at once. "'Dream's' good," he said. "'Dreamy's' just the thing. We'll put it in the title."

"Dreamy what?" I asked. "You can't just--"

"Dreamy Moon."

"That's lousy," said Louis. "Too many 'moon' songs lately. But 'moon' is a good rhyme--easy to sing. What rhymes with 'moon'?"

"'Prune,'" I suggested, "'loon,' 'balloon,' 'saloon.' 'Dreamy Saloon'--how's that?"

Louis looked disgusted. "'Lagoon' is the word," he said. Sid jumped to his feet.''

Having decided to call the song "Dreamy Lagoon," they next need to decide what the song's about. That's the easiest part.

"What'll we write it about? What does anybody write a song about, you sap? Love, of course. All about how some girl is the cream in your coffee and the salt in your stew, and jeest, she's driving you nutty, and what the hell are you going to do. That stuff."

The veteran songwriter in the story also declares that "You've got to have your title at the end of the first and last lines, and somewhere in the middle too, if possible." He says "You got to rub their noses in it, otherwise the music publishers won't touch it."

Gradually the song was written.

There were a great many important considerations I had never thought of. We had to find words of one syllable; words with open vowels that were easy to sing. We could not introduce any notes outside the limited range of an ordinary voice, nor thoughts outside the range of an ordinary intellect.

And the result? "Dreamy Lagoon."

I met my love beside a dreamy lagoon
We pledged our love beneath the gleam of the moon
The memory of her voice enthralls me,
Calls me homeward
I left my heart beside that dreamy lagoon
But in her heart she knows I'm coming back soon
There we'll live and love forever
Beside that dreamy lago-o-on!

So there you go! Now you know how to write a popular song. Your own mileage may vary in 2008, however, when lagoons are somewhat out-of-style.

Yet Another "Andromeda Strain"

I spent four hours watching the 2008 version of "Andromeda Strain," not because I LIKED it, but because it was a brilliant case-study in hack scriptwriting.

Do YOU want to write a script that is guaranteed to be filmed but will be disliked by everybody?

First you should go through your files and find a script you've already written, but which you didn't like much, or maybe it got rejected. This script could be about -- for example -- a deadly organism sent through a wormhole in space, and a bunch of scientists who try to unravel the mystery of how and why it arrived.

Then, when you're reading this mediocre script to your wife, maybe she could say "Hey, that sounds a bit like this book I read once...what was it called...The Gemini Strain? The Sirius Strain? Sort of like that, but less interesting."

Brood. Feel sorry for yourself. But when you hear that some producers want to remake Michael Crichton's "The Andromeda Strain," jump in and say "I'll do it!" and then just grab the set-pieces from Crichton's novel and mix them with your old script. It doesn't matter if none of them fit together. It doesn't even matter if doing so waters down (or completely removes) any of the interesting bits of Crichton's book, such as the actual BIOLOGY of the organism or the blatant "if it can go wrong, it will" theme. Get rid of that stuff and replace it with up-to-date science, like computers you can converse with in plain English and hilarious "ePaper." Don't forget the Buckyballs.

Suddenly you find out that this is going to be a FOUR HOUR MINISERIES! Open your textbook of American Character Archetypes and assign one to each person in the script (stuff like "father is too busy but still loves his son anyway" and "would do anything for her country EXCEPT sacrifice her family" and "no-nonsense, brilliant female surgeon waiting for a man of her caliber"). You need to do this to replace all that science stuff you took out. Make everybody twenty years younger, and cute. Because the best scientific minds are always young and cute, you know. Make them fall in love.

Having done all this, choose to make the story TOPICAL, whether it wants to be or not. Throw in everything that you read about in yesterday's newspaper, especially terrorism and offshore drilling (errr, "mining undersea vents," rather). Make the script exceptionally critical of all the illegalities and excesses of the Bush administration, but because you don't want to end up defending yourself against Ann Coulter on a talk show, replace President Bush with a likable man who says things like:

AIDE: We can evacuate your wife and child immediately, sir.

PRESIDENT: And what about all the OTHER wives and children? Huh? What about them? GET OUT OF MY SIGHT!

Oh! And don't forget to Always Support The Troops.

But...how should it end? You need a climax. Better yet, you need four climaxes simultaneously! One of these climaxes should involve an acrophobic who has to catch the severed thumb of a closet homosexual war-monger, which was cut off and thrown to him by a man who is epileptic and dying in a pool of radioactive water. Because it's that kind of movie.

Finally, at the bottom of your script, write "Crap CGI only!" and underline it.

Life on Repeat

The Broken Computer Keyboards

I recently noticed that the "plus" key on my new computer keyboard didn't work. Apple promptly sent me another keyboard...which has a mostly unresponsive "right arrow" key.

A third keyboard is now in the mail. You'll know it's arrived when different letters start disappearing from my blog posts.

The Persistent Junk Mail

After three weeks of receiving "The Record Save and Sell," an enormous package of weekly junkmail, I finally had enough. The thing is too big for my mailbox, but the carrier just stuffs it in anyway and leaves the lid open. Therefore my legitimate mail gets crushed and rained on.

I called the company and was "taken off the list," but I received it again the following week. I called back and was reassured that I REALLY wouldn't get it any more...but of course I did. I finally managed to track down the MANAGER, who absolutely, positively promised that I would never receive the Save and Sell again.

It was in my mailbox on Friday.

The Squatter Squirrels

Several months ago my landlords finally admitted that there are squirrels in my attic, and they patched up the roof and laid out traps to remove the critters once and for all.

This weekend they gnawed a hole into the opposite end of the building. They're back again, and this time I imagine they're singing a song:

We're happy little squirrels and we're back to bother you,
with our squealing and our humping and our chew and chew and chew.
We spurn all laws, we have big claws, we're muscular and furry, oh,
don't try so hard to lose us 'cause we'll get back in a hurry!

If you sit all day and wonder what we're doing to your ceiling,
you cannot understand...your little attic's so appealing!
We live in peace, we'll sign no lease, we'll send no rent your way, 'cause
we're happy chewing squirrels and we've moved in here to stay!

In Praise of Morley Callaghan

I first heard about Morley Callaghan while reading Carolyn Strange's mostly-dire "Toronto's Girl Problem." She presented Callaghan's book "Strange Fugitive" (about bootleggers and gangsters in Toronto during 1928) as a deliberate attempt to counter Toronto's self-proclaimed squeaky-clean image.

Before reading "Strange Fugitive," however, I ran across Callaghan's short story "Escapade" in The New Yorker. I fell in love, and found myself wondering how I'd missed reading his work for so many years.

Callaghan's fiction has been mostly overshadowed by his colourful life; his brief stay in Paris and his friendship with Ernest Hemmingway, who he famously K.O.'d in a boxing match. He has also been dismissed by some as a hack who hammered out short stories and novels which rarely deviated from his established style (or, as some have interpreted it, a complete LACK of style).

But his style is so GOOD. I have never read Hemmingway's work but Callaghan's straight-forward, undecorated prose is often compared to his. He uses no excess words, no colourful adjectives, no metaphor. His stores are written in an almost journalistic style along the lines of "These are the people and this is what happened to them."

I just finished the first volume of Callaghan's four-volume "Complete Stories" and I've noticed that his REAL genius was the limited nature of his omniscient narrator: he tells us what his characters are thinking but never delves into their motivations or tries to interpret their thoughts, let alone judge them. Since most of us -- like Callaghan's "everyday Joe" sort of characters -- fool ourselves constantly with rationalizations and repression, each story is a slow peeling-away of motivation, until you're left with the bare and unambiguous working of the protagonist's soul.

This is what makes Callaghan's fiction so spectacular. He captures what it really feels like to exist and to think in the limited way that us people do. Using the simplest language he conveys human complexity without every appearing DELIBERATE about it. As always, "These are the people and this is what happened."

He can get a bit tedious, I admit. By avoiding flowery language Callaghan tends to frequently use the same adjectives ("plump") and you get a BIT tired of every story opening the same way. But that's what he did, and it's what he did best. If you have never read a Morley Callaghan book then you really, really should.

Misfortunes Come to Those Who Are Fuzzy-Headed (The Short Version)

Last night I locked myself out of my apartment. Then I lost my bank card and my driver's license.

I am continuing to receive the "Waterloo Record Save and Sell."

The humidity has turned my cat's litterbox into a seeping miasma of stink.

Hot.

Creepy Pedro Episode Seven

I started writing episode seven of "Creepy Pedro" in 2001. I finally finished it this week. If you'd like to read it, go here and click on the last episode. I warn you that it's long, rambling, unpleasant, and not necessarily work-safe, but I think a lot of it is really funny.

Like all of the Creepy Pedro plays I had started it with absolutely no plan whatsoever, but this time I wrote Pedro and his friends into such a conundrum that I couldn't figure out how to get them out...you see, the second half was a parody of the sort of thinking that underlay the gleeful rush into the second Iraq war, and you know how impossible it is to deal with THAT sort of situation.

At least nobody died as a direct consequence of my writing this script.

The episode is called "The Creepy One From the Sky" and it was heavily inspired by the books I was reading at the time: The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. I figured that Pedro hadn't been dropped into a fantasy setting yet, so it was about time. I was also just discovering George Saunders and I unconsciously ripped off his dialog style in a few places.

If you have the fortitude, enjoy! You don't have to read the previous episodes to understand what's going on. It will all be baffling anyway.

"The Soul of a New Machine"

I'm re-reading Tracy Kidder's "The Soul of a New Machine." The first time I read it I was most interested in the technical aspects, but this time I'm concentrating more on Kidder's ability to describe his subject with beautiful prose, which is strange considering it's a book about a bunch of engineers designing a computer.

The following paragraphs, I think, are Kidder's crowning achievements and indicative of the book as a whole. Like much of his best writing, you don't need to understand what's going on in order to get to the heart of the issue: a human being, swimming in the unnatural world of equations and electronics, trying to grasp what he's seeing...and working under an impossible amount of stress. All that said, this scene is still and quiet, as most awful situations really are:

Something has happened. The straight white line that was running across the little blue screen has rearranged itself into a jagged shape, like a diagram of two teeth on one side of a zipper. Rosen is staring at the picture, his nails raised to his mouth. Slowly, still staring, he rotates his hand and takes most of his knuckles in his teeth. For a long moment, he holds this position, frozen like the image on the screen.

It might be a painting of a nightmare by Goya. Your eye is drawn from the young man's face and the hand resting in his teeth, to the jagged line on the screen, which is in fact a picture of an electronic event that took place, in infinitesimal time, just a moment ago. Though it is a common sort of picture, often seen in the lab, all of a sudden it has become dreadful. But who can say why?

Kidder earned his Pulitzer Prize.