Kreativ Kyklops

Blogging friend Absolute Vanilla, in a display of either perverse humor or the early signs of oncoming dementia (Happy Birthday, sweetie!), has given me one of those blog award thingies:


[Is there some rule that says these things have to be designed with colors I would never be caught dead wearing? Just kidding!]

I generally do my best to avoid these meme things, but since it's AV's birthday, and since she's one of only a handful of people that regularly drop by and leave a comment, and in the interests of fostering world peace, saving the rain forests, feeding the poor, being the best that I can be, and all that other stuff, I figured I could play along this one time.

According to the rules I guess I'm supposed to list "seven things that I love." In an attempt to make it interesting for you, the reader, I'm going to leave out the obvious: my wife, daughter, mother, family, etc. So, OK, seven things I love, in no particular order:

1. I love the perverse genius of this, surely the greatest photoshop of all time (the "DK" in the background is a nice touch):

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2. I love this album, the best Stones album ever:


3. I love the coolest game on earth, and the childhood memory this picture evokes:

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4. I love The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe. (I've been an SF geek since childhood).


5. I love beer.

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6. I love pina coladas and making... doh! Actually, I love William Shatner. Seriously, I can't think of a funnier, more honest, more entertaining actor on TV. And don't even get me started on James Kirk. That guy had the best job in the history of jobs...

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7. Well, OK, I love my wife, my daughter, my mother, my sisters, the rest of my family, and all you zombies, too!

Imaginary Album

Although I've been goaded into playing along in the past, I'm not really into the "I tag so and so" meme thing. I saw the one I'm about to show you while checking out Resonant Enigma's blog and was somewhat taken with the idea (in fact I'm actually volunteering to do this one):

1. Get your band name by generating a Random Article on Wikipedia. The title of the article is your band name.

2.Check this page for Random Quotes to get the album title. Last few words of the last quote on the page.

3.Then get your album art from this page that produces random Flikr photos, copyright free under Creative Commons.

4.Use Photoshop or whatever editing software you have to make it look good. You know, like a real "album covah!"

5.Write a little blurb describing what kind of music you think it would be.

And so, here it is:

Original Photo Credit: ooOJasonOoo
Heroin--Enjoy the Interval

• Style: Self-described as Lou Reed influenced emo by lead singer/guitar player Joey St. Augustine. Others might call it Dylan on downers after an all-night binge of listening to Sabbath.
• Influences: Lou Reed, Green Day, Gwar, The Partridge Family
  
• Lyric: The sky is blue/ The sea is calm/ I ate some fruit/ I killed my mom
• Quote: "Rock 'n' roll is like cool, ya know, and I really dig the bands that play that shit. But we really wanna roll 'n' rock, yeah? I mean, that's the kinda sound we're goin' for."
• What Lester Bangs would say if he were still alive: Philip Seymour Hoffman? Almost Famous? Fuck, I'm glad I'm dead.

[The band name, title, and photo seem almost too good to be random, but I swear that's what came up first when I clicked the links. I think I'll have to do this again sometime...]

Tagged Out

I've been tagged by my buddy Glenn, which means once again I'm going to inflict readers with personal information they probably could live without. The rules of this meme go something like this:

1. 1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.
2. 2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3. 3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
4. 4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Rules 1 and 2 are no problem; I don't really mind being tagged. I'm afraid I'll have to pass on rules 3 and 4, though. (You guessed it! I don't have 7 friends. This is my secret shame!)

Anyway, without further ado, 7 random things about me:

1. I was expelled in my first week of high school for setting off a stink bomb in a stairwell (my parents were, shall we say, somewhat less than pleased). The kicker is that I was completely innocent of the charge. I remember it like it was yesterday... I'm sitting in homeroom at the beginning of the second day, when my teacher comes in, looks at me, and tells me they want to see me down in the office. As I'm getting up to go, he calls out, "you better take your books and stuff with you." I walk down to the office trying to figure out what the fuck I could have done to warrant this. Damn, it was only the second day! Turns out that some little shit (probably the guy who actually did it) told the principal that he'd seen me near the stairwell when the stink bomb went off. I was given no chance to defend myself and was sent home for a week. (This is how good kids turn bad, my friends, and don't ever fucking kid yourselves.) I would eventually get my revenge. In my second year I managed to steal the "detention book," releasing dozens of students from untold hours of boredom and drudgery. I got back at the rat, too, but that's a story unto itself...
2. As anyone who comes here regularly has already figured out, I'm an atheist and an existentialist. This means, of course, that I have no sense of right and wrong and I would just as soon kill a motherfucker as shake his hand. And I eat babies.
3. Shameless self-promotion (1): I made the Dean's List every year I was in university, and was awarded a full scholarship to do my Master's Degree. I'm an asshole, but a well-educated one.
4. Shameless self-promotion (2): As a first-year university student I got an "A" in a class on Aristotle's Metaphysics (a seminar class populated mostly by grad students). I've translated (from Greek) large chunks of Homer's Odyssey and several plays by Euripides (among other things).
5. Shameless self-promotion (3): I'm a pretty good drummer. See:
6. Having said the above, I'm actually a pretty modest person if you meet me! I'm a pretty good guy to have a beer with, too!
7. When I was 14 I broke my collar bone in a bicycle accident. It's the only bone I've ever broken, although I took a few stiches in the head a few years ago falling down some stairs (it was my birthday...), and I've sprained both ankles (motorcycle accident/frisbee catch at the beach), among other things. I'm starting to get a bit... wobbly...

Analyze Meme

Eli over at Multi Medium was tagged with something (I think) is called the "123" meme:

Take the nearest book, turn to page 123.
Look for the fifth sentence, then post the three sentences following the fifth sentence.

Eli himself hasn't actually tagged anyone, but has invited those who want to volunteer to do so. I've decided to participate because 1) I'm desperate for any excuse to actually write something, anything, in the hope that the simple mechanical act of clacking away at the keyboard will somehow, like magic, stimulate my brain and give me back my writing mojo; and, 2) the book that happens to be nearest me, Follies of the Wise by Frederick Crews, has a pretty interesting passage at the mark indicated by the meme.

Writing about the "prepsychoanalytic" Sigmund Freud, Crews tells of a man who believed that his hysterical patients were all harboring repressed memories of early abuse and who cured them by "unknotting their repression". As Crews continues, however, Freud "suffered a failure of nerve; too many fathers were being identified as perpetrators," a development that lead Freud to psychoanalysis, "a doctrine that ascribes incestuous design not to adult molesters but, grotesquely, to children themselves."

Freud finally had to cope with the disagreeable thought that his hysterics' "stories" of very early abuse had been peremptory inventions of his own. He did so, however, through a dumbfoundingly illogical, historically momentous expedient, ascribing to his patients' unconscious minds a repressed desire for the precocious couplings that he had hitherto urged them to remember having helplessly undergone. That is how psychoanalysis as we know it came into being.

So, while a bit of Freud might inject some fun and liveliness into literary discussions, it's not very good science. Well, it's not "science" at all, actually. Psychoanalysis was the result one layer of bullshit being papered over with another...

4 X 4 X Far Meme

So my blogging buddy Absolute Vanilla (or, rather, her avian masters) have tagged the entire internet with this 4 x 4 x Far meme. (Why in the fuck, in this day and age, does the word "meme" fail the spell-check? C'mon, geeks, get it to-fuckin-gether!) Anyway, since I don't have to tag anybody, I thought I'd give it a go. And it goes something like this:

Four jobs I've held:

1. I once had a job working on a Canadian submarine (yeah, yeah, laugh it up) that was in dry dock. We were supposed to sweep up and stuff after the tradesmen (welders, etc.) were through. I worked there for three days. The first two were spent sleeping and smoking cigarettes in the sub's fuel tanks. On the third day I swept the same small pile of dirt three feet forward and three feet back for eight of the longest hours of my existence on this earth. I never went back for the fourth day (not even to collect my pay). To this very day I don't think I can say that I've recovered from the experience. (Astute readers have probably noticed the lingering effects here on this very blog--sweep it this way, sweep it that...)
2. The best job I ever had was as a rock drummer. Only an acute sense of modesty prevents me from bragging about how many chicks I nailed in what was definitely the ten most glorious ten years of my life.
3. I was once the assistant manager of a record store in my home town. Mmm... promo albums... I never paid for tunes then...
4. As a university student I racked up a few years flipping burgers and slinging beers. Now that I think about it, I've spent a good chunk of my life in bars. I've never been in a bar and felt uncomfortable (unless some woman was throwing a drink in my face, or something...).

Four movies I've watched over and over again:

1. Terminator 2: Not my favorite, actually, but if it's on I'll never change the channel.
2. Reservoir Dogs: A fuckin' Greek tragedy. Bonus points for the analysis of "Like a Virgin."
3. V is for Vendetta: Recent movie with an eternal theme: "fuck the man!"
4. Dr. Strangelove: In my humble opinion, the most cynical, topical, the funniest, most completely fucked up mind-blowing movie of all-time. Incredible.

Four places I've been:
1. Downtown Manila.
2. Downtown Seoul.
3. Downtown Tokyo.
4. Downtown Halifax (still my fave!)

Four places I've lived:
1. Downtown Halifax.
2. Germany: my Dad was in the Canadian army (yeah, yeah, laugh it up) and I lived there on a Canadian army base for three years ('60-'63, I think).
3. North River, Nova Scotia: I had to do a lot of hitch-hiking as a youngster, just to get someplace that sold Playboy or Penthouse...
4. I lived in a brown paper bag in a septic tank--heh, no, that's Monty Python! Did I mention downtown Halifax?

Four TV shows I watch:
1. Battlestar Galactica
2. Heroes
3. Lost
4. Star Trek
(I don't watch a lot of TV.)

Four radio shows I listen to:
I don't think there are four radio stations in Japan...

Four things I look forward to:
1. My daughter greeting me when I come home from work.
2. Friday night beer and blogging.
3. Nights out drinking where I don't have to work the next day.
4. Playing drums.

Four places I'd rather be:
1. Downtown Halifax.
2. Behind a drum kit.
3. On top of... oops, can't say that! Hahaha! [What dear? Oh, nothing!]
4. Sitting at a bar.

Four people I e-mail regularly:
1. My mom.
2. My sisters.
3. My best friend.
4. Aoi Sora.

Tag, I'm "It"...

Jeez, I'm starting to get bruises! I've been tagged not once, but twice. For both friends who've tagged me: thanks for thinking about me, but please don't take it wrong if I don't tag anyone else (my other friends are very busy these days saving whales, electing a Democrat, getting drunk, and other important stuff; I, on the other hand, having no principles whatsoever, have all kinds of free time!).

First of all, Taffiny at to taste a peach has honored me with the "Colors of Friendship Badge". Look!



Thanks, Taff, I really am happy that you consider me worthy of your friendship. (When you get that "Japan" novel published, though, I want a mention in the acknowledgments! And some publisher freebies when you hit Japan to promote it!)

The next one requires a bit more than humble thanks. Absolute Vanilla's alien chicken friend, Atyallah--by the way, AV, have you ever heard of yaki tori? The Japanese would just love to meat, er, meet Atyllah--has tasked me with :

* link to the person who tagged you (done!)
* post the rules on your blog (done!)
* share six non-important things/ habits/ quirks about yourself (to follow!)
* tag at least 3 people at the end of the post and link to their blogs (sorry!)
* let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog (ditto!)

Six "non-important things/ habits/ quirks" about me (Kyklops):

1. I don't believe in God, but I religiously do nothing on Sundays. Actually, I stole that from an old Elvin Bishop tune. Surely something to strive for, though... (What, that's important? Jeesh, get a life!)

2. My favorite hockey team is the Boston Bruins... (yeah, yeah, OK already: that one is important; fucking sue me, already...)

3. Sometimes I kinda... you know, wish I were Captain Kirk...

4. My favorite food is pizza. Before moving to Japan I would have said any pizza. Actually, I don't much care for pizza anymore...

5. I'm not important. Neither are you. Neither is anyone else. Whoopee!!

6. I drink about 5 gallons of coffee a day. And about 2 gallons of beer on Friday nights...

(S)He Memes Well...

My blogging friend (and closet leg pervert!) Absolute Vanilla has tagged me with some sort of "viral story" meme-type thingie.

Here are the terms & conditions (apparently from Splotchy, the originator):

"This has probably been done before, but that is not stopping me, oh no.
Here’s what I would like to do. I want to create a story that branches out in a variety of different, unexpected ways. I don’t know how realistic it is, but that’s what I’m aiming for. Hopefully, at least one thread of the story can make a decent number of hops before it dies out.

If you are one of the carriers of this story virus (i.e. you have been tagged and choose to contribute to it), you will have one responsibility, in addition to contributing your own piece of the story: you will have to tag at least one person that continues your story thread. So, say you tag five people. If four people decide to not participate, it’s okay, as long as the fifth one does. And if all five participate, well that’s five interesting threads the story spins off into.

Not a requirement, but something your readers would appreciate: to help people trace your own particular thread of the narrative, it will be helpful if you include links to the chapters preceding yours.”

I woke up hungry. I pulled my bedroom curtain to the side and looked out on a hazy morning. I dragged myself into the kitchen, in search of something to eat. I reached for a jar of applesauce sitting next to the sink, and found it very cold to the touch. I opened the jar and realized it was frozen. (Splotchy)

My first idea was to put the applesauce in the microwave. Hey, I was still tired. Could I scoop some out and put whipped cream on it? No, too solid. Why was it so damn cold in here? I walked over to the thermostat and saw that the heat hadn’t clicked on all night and the temperature had dropped substantially overnight. Now, tired and hungry, I opened the access panel on the heater. There’s the problem: why was someone cooking a duck in here? (SamuraiFrog)

I grabbed the bird and bit into a leg. It tasted like cheese. Or chicken. What kind of weird duck was this? I spat out the rancid meat and threw the rest of the duck in the bin.
Jackson strode into the kitchen, his short dreadlocks bouncing lightly around his face.
“Is my duck ready yet?” he said as he turned towards me. “Hey man, put some clothes on!”
Shit, I had forgotten to put on my boxers. (PJ)

Which explained why I was so damned cold. I grabbed a tea towel and tried to make myself look half decent.
Jackson snorted, "You'd do better with a fig leaf!" Yeah, well, whatever.
"So, where's my bird?" Jackson asked.
"In the bin," I snapped, "where it should be - thing died long, long ago."
"You binned my bird?" Jackson's eyes had started to bulge with rage. "Why you..."
"It would've killed you," I yelled as he lunged at me, the breadknife in his hand. "Damn! It was only an off-duck!" (Absolute Vanilla)

"An off-duck? Fuck off," he screamed, his arm poised to bring the knife plunging down into the general direction of my now racing heart. He stopped short.
"Hey, isn't that tea towel part of the set my auntie gave to me last year?"
"Er, yeah, I guess so..."
"What the fuck are you doing covering your ding-a-ling with it?"
"My "ding-a-ling"...?"
"Yeah, your prick, arsehole. Jesus, you never heard of Chuck Berry?"
I'm naked, I'm covering my "ding-a-ling" with Jackson's auntie's tea towel, and I've just binned his bird.
The doorbell rang. (Kyklops)

I tag (out of sheer spite and/or revenge):
Pierre
Maht
Glenn
Brendan
The Usual Stuff

Randomly Phoctober!

My pal Maht over at The Moon Topples is running a series in which he's posting photos everyday for the month of October. He's calling it "Phoctober" and everyone's invited to join in. Here you are, Maht...

A couple of vending machines. I'm sure it's already been done, but I'm thinking of doing a series of these.

Some odd-looking lights.

Technicolor dreams...

My daughter playing around an odd fountain.

I love this kind of scene, but I'm not really sure why.

Kyklops' legs! Some silliness for Verilion and Absolute Vanilla (you both know why!).

Better L8T...

Between work and my ongoing physical pain I haven't been able to post much lately. A couple of weeks ago my online bud Daniel tagged me with the "8 Things" meme. I haven't forgotten you, Daniel! I've already done this one (about a month ago) but, being the egotistical swine that I am, it shouldn't be too difficult for me to come up with eight more "fascinating" details about me and my life.

1. The last band I ever played in once opened for the legendary Blue Öyster Cult. It was the proudest moment of my life, up to that point. After we played the first set (and we fuckin' rocked!), BOC came on and blew us off the stage (naturally). It was a bar gig, so we had to go back on and play the last, early-morning set (finishing about 3:30 am). As we were playing I saw my girlfriend leave with guitarist Buck Dharma. The other guys saw it too. I'm intimately familiar with the concept "the highs and lows of life"...
2. I can't fucking stand "reality" TV shows (unless "The Osbournes" counts as a "reality" show).
3. My favorite sandwich, which my father taught me how to make, is sardines on toast with mustard and sliced raw onion. Damn, it's been about 10 years since I had one...
4. Somebody (I really don't remember who) once said something like "you should try everything twice because you may have missed something the first time." This has been a guiding principle of my life.
5. My Dad served (as a member of the Canadian Army) with the UN in Korea (before he met my mother) and later in Cyprus. My father was both a good man and a soldier (listen up, kids!). He was proud to have served with UN peace-keeping forces (listen up, Americans!). It would be an understatement to say that my father's military service, and his stories about that service, have informed my own opinions about the role of the military in world affairs.
6. As a "Canadian living and working in Japan" I derive a perverse pleasure from referring to Canada as the "old country."
7. I miss Canada terribly.
8. I love my family dearly.

Tagged Out...

I've been tagged by my buddy John at konichwa, bitches. I'm supposed to give eight random facts about myself and then tag eight other people. Unfortunately, I don't think I have eight friends who haven't already been tagged by some meme or another recently, so I don't think I can play along fully on this one.

I can, however, list eight random things about myself:

1. Brush with fame: Michael Chiklis (The Shield, Fantastic 4, etc.) said hello to me at Narita Airport in Tokyo about two years ago.


2. I can play "Mary Had a Little Lamb" on every musical instrument known to humankind.


3. I was in grade 4 when I played my first game of organized hockey in a league in Winnipeg, Manitoba. I scored four goals and two assists. A "scout" from an "elite" team happened to see my game and invited me to play that evening with his team. My initial excitement was dampened by having to don the jersey of the hated Montreal Canadiens (I was born a Boston Bruins fan). This indignity had an adverse effect on my play, and to this day I blame the "curse of the Canadiens" for my ultimate failure to fulfill my destiny as a star player in the National Hockey League. Instead, I turned to a life of crime and debauchery which, of course, had only one logical end: teaching English at a university here in Japan. I'll see you in hell, Habs.


4. I lived in Germany for three years when I was a kid, and even attended kindergarten there. Apparently I used to make my mother sick with my habit of crossing the autobahn in order to get to the Canadian military base where my father worked. I did this because when I (4-years-old) arrived at the gate the guards would call my dad and he'd give me a ride back home... in a jeep! One day I got lost and wandered onto the American base by mistake. Paydirt! They drove me (in a jeep!) to the Canadian base, and from there my dad drove me home (in a jeep!).


5. When I was 17 I hitch-hiked from Truro, Nova Scotia to Medicine Hat, Alberta. I ran out of money in Medicine Hat, so I hung out there for a week. I hitch-hiked back to Truro when the drugs wore off and I started to get hungry.


6. I once dated a stripper (for about 6 weeks).


7. My only A+ grade in university came from a course in "existentialism". Talk about self-discovery...


8. My mother is fond of telling the following story about me: When I was about 5 she sent me to the corner store to buy a loaf of bread. I honestly don't remember this, but apparently when I found out that the store was sold out of bread I walked outside and threw the money away. I'd like to think that this story is true...

That's probably more than anyone needed (or wanted) to know about me...

Meme-orandum

My good friend Glenn over at Bigezbear has tagged me with a Thinking Blogger Award. Gaze in wonder and awe:



I'm not really into this "tagging" and "meme" stuff, so my initial impulse was to jump on a plane to New Orleans and give Glenn a nice, warm Nova Scotia bitchslap (heehee, just kidding, buddy!). But then I thought about it and decided to take it as the compliment I'm sure he meant it to be. Thank you, Glenn.

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The rules of the Thinking Blogger Award are fairly simple. First you have to post the rules. Here they are:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,

2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,

3. Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award' with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn't fit your blog).

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Now I have to name 5 blogs I read that "make me think". Here they are (alphabetically):

So far as I know, the shadowy and mysterious Codename V doesn't know me from a hole in the wall. In fact, I can't even properly "tag" her because the has "comments" turned off. Too bad, because she's got some interesting things to say about music and movies and other stuff.

Daniel, the Guy in the Desert writes on a wide variety of topics, from the personal to the political. I've never had a problem hanging out with gay men in the "real" world, and he and Glenn have shown me that things are no different online. NOTE: Daniel says his blog is for "mature readers". I don't think he'd mind if mentioned that some of the (non-pornographic) images on his site might not be safe for work.

Emarie, the disaffected housewife, is an online friend who seems to be too busy to post much these days, but when she does write it's always thoughtful and (generally) humorous. Emarie, get yourself a-bloggin'!

Discovering my friend Maliha's blog, Lightness of Being..., has been one of my most positive (and eye-opening) experiences. Maliha is a young Muslim woman living in the US. She quite literally writes about everything (and fiction, too), and she writes it very well. She tagged me once. I'm only too happy to return the favor! ;-)

Last, but not least, is UK blogger Shit Sandwich. A veritable font of (proper!) English usage, music, and BBC programming, Shit's site is (as you may have already guessed) irreverent, but also informed and intelligent. Leave a comment and you'll be heartily welcomed by Shit and his regular readers.

I guess all that's left is to give everyone above the "good news" that they've been tagged!