Home
Saturday Night Off
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2927
So the owner approaches me and offers me a Saturday night off. It's been forever since I've had a weekend (ish) off, with cash in my pocket, we're trying out a couple of new waitresses, and so I pounce....
Saturday Morning. A Saturday Night Off.....I'm a waiter (at the moment) - this never happens, never, ever, ever,....what to do? What to do?
And my head is reeling with the possibilities...
I'm sober, 2 days, and so I'm a little bit quicker on the draw than I should be, probably...
The possibilities, the possibilities....All morning, afternoon, considering...
In the end they collapse - as they must - and I take the boy to see "Famous Puppet Death Scenes" at the Grand (3rd time for me), after which we head over to the Loose Moose Theater to take in the "Cinema of Regret". A long day, night, of high expectations that in the end were poorly met, a fall-on-your-face flat sort of Saturday off. Nothing could have lived up to the anticipation...
Tonight I can write the saddest lines - Pablo Neruda
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Quotes
- Hits: 1955
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example,'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Through nights like this one I held her in my arms
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.
What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.
This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.
The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.
Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her voide. Her bright body. Her inifinite eyes.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.
As The World Burns: 50 Simple Things You Can Do To Stay In Denial
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 2038
And I picked this up at the Flea Market, a Graphic Novel, attracted by the environmental themes and rough graphic style, I can imagine that with a little (or probably a lot) of practice my style might approach it. "For the daughter" I tell myself - because, indeed, I think she'll like it, but as she's still a few months away I pass the time by reading it.
And it's brilliant. By brilliant I mean it uncovers and reveals the complex layers, motivations and consequences of the ecological abyss we are plummeting into. And it's a bit hard-hitting, but the truth is, and it doesn't satisfy itself with the conventional media platitudes of "reuse, recycle...", it attacks the corporations, governments and institutions that are promoting the destruction of the planet, and raises complex philosophical issues of how domesticated, indeed zombified, by corporate and consumer culture, we are, and how we rebel against doing small and necessary evils to prevent larger ones...
It tackles in uncomfortable ways our passive and impotent attitudes towards the destruction of our planet, and raises up a call to arms...Genius. It's not a happy book, but unless you've been on Prozac the past hundred years, it's not a happy world.
AS THE WORLD BURNS: 50 Simple Things You Can Do To Stay In Denial - By Derrick Jensen & Stephanie McMillan. 5/5 Stars, and kudos for them for having the courage to write a book that calls it like it is and probably hasn't sold that well. I'm hoping the daughter loves it as much as I have.
The Magazine
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2576
Now the Magazine was a job I lucked into last spring via a Nelson friend, I was familiar with it, sort-of an internet come to print in a high-gloss format, quarterly, published on different themes. I liked it. And as she worked for them doing their books she lined me up a job, some writing on spec, and I took it on remotely from Calgary.
They'd send me proofs of the layouts, lists of the bands they were looking for print on, and I'd hack out the articles. The research aspect of it was interesting, I learned far more about a lot of bands then I ever knew, and was introduced to a lot of styles of music that I never would have been otherwise. The format of the magazine meant that I would read up on certain artists or groups - Led Zepplin, Pink Floyd, for example, Wikipedia articles, often in the league of 30 to 40 thousand words, then condense them into a 100 word salacious factoid meant to give the reader some slight titillation and urge to explore further.
It was harder than it sounds. Some of the articles would come pretty easy, but given the "equality" - meaning that Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen would each get the same number of words, say, as Randy Bachman, well, it didn't seem fair. It didn't matter, it was experience in an industry I was curious about, and my theories and understanding of the whoring ethics of journalism were proven. Meaning that it would have been far, far better to be writing to my own ends, but like a lot of journalists and copywriters, this was to be my springboard...
After a couple of months of slow and fractured communications I drove out to Nelson the meet the people with whom I'd long corresponded with, a small office out of a house, nice folks, putting a face to my prose, as it were, as they (and I) were curious...
In the end the magazine fell through, I didn't understand why but it was explained to me as follows. The publisher/owner had brought in another writer from Calgary, highly recommended, they had an "understanding" which revolved around the writer expecting to be paid around $10K per month, and the publisher capping his salary at $2K per month, and adding to his list of responsibilities some graphic design and web presence...
The writer, meanwhile, for want of anyplace to stay, had settled into the publishers house and helped himself to his wife...
In the end the publisher tanked the magazine, fired everyone that worked for him (or laid off, it was contract work, after all, and the magazine was supposedly done), then packed his wife off to Bali...
Random letters followed, demanding refunds for work paid, as the magazine hadn't gone to print, checking with my friend I found that everyone was getting them, and the best thing to do was ignore them.
Thus ended my short and inglorious career in journalism...
Page 621 of 888