When thinking outside the box just isn't enough
Writer Perk #37: Pre-release tunes in my inbox. I’d never heard of Magneta Lane, and opted to set aside the bio for later, uploaded the goodies to my MP3 and headed out for a stroll. I was boppin’ and smilin’ in no time. Despite the ridiculous cold and layers of clothes, I was suddenly transported […]
Her name was Jyoti Singh Pandey. The attack reads like a cross between a depraved nightmare and a bathsalts bad trip: Jyoti, a 23 year old physiotherapy student and her male companion are trapped on a moving bus, repeatedly and violently violated, beaten and discarded, naked and bleeding. Then the assailants try to run Jyoti […]
Here we are again: pushing through crowds to buy crap, squeezing in mandatory generosity and “quality time” with people we moved away from for clear and sometimes talk show worthy reasons, or locked into awkward, hopefully drunken, office parties where you can leave with an adequate amount of regret and sugar cookies. Still, people get […]
I don’t have a Bucket List. Sure, there are an infinite number of things I hope to, long to, don’t-even-know-yet-that-I-want-to do, and a finite amount of resources — time being the slipperiest — with which to do it all, so I see how a list could help the To-Do types stay focused and feel accomplished along this strange meandering trip.
“Don’t stand in front of my amps if you want to have children one day.” – Steve Vai “I think it’s more than awesome when you still have that buzzing in your ears.” – post show thoughts from a first time concert goer It’s not that I’ve ever had a conscious affinity for guitarists; I’ve […]
M312, the innocuously named motion to appoint a committee to determine the moment life begins, en route to subversively reassess abortion access never actually stood a chance.
The Altered Consciousness of Maxwell Silverhammer is an ambitious novelette (Is that a new term, or a smaller novella? Can we just call this a short story? 20 pages is actually a short story). It introduces characters that could have such depth but never get there, too many unfulfilled plot possibilities, and some decidedly-poor word choices.
I bet the thick silence that comes after each song must be a shock to those attending their first kirtan (devotional call and response) singing circle. It’s been too long since I’ve taken part in one, and at the First Annual Montreal Yoga Music Festival I have to remind myself to resist the urge to clap and whoop in appreciation…
Bhakta = One who practices the yoga of devotion Break out your ankle bells and meditation pillow, the 1st Annual Montreal Yoga Music Festival gets grooving this weekend at Loyola campus. With 2 solid days of scheduled kirtan (devotional call and response singing), talks from such infamous locals as Dr. Bali, and even Kids’ Yoga […]
We’re a sensuous city left without a touchstone; a void where our collective weeks once coalesced. We have no physical literary souvenirs that can’t just as easily be printed from a computer in Denver…
I thought of Cabot Square. Oh, you may know it as Crack Park — the one across from the old Forum, the small oasis of green goodness that the strip desperately needs, the one that’s currently owned and operated by some of the crudest forms of humanity. I can think of no other spot in town that doesn’t even try to conceal its seedy side in the sun; it doesn’t pretend to have dignity or shame. Are you really drunk, smoking, pregnant, and fist-fighting on the sidewalk in the afternoon? Really?…
This past Sunday, I awoke too early for my taste. Rain was falling, the sky had a look in its eye that warned it would go on for days, and I had heard there were snowflakes in the city despite the green mist of buds spraying the trees, and the bravest most daredevil flowers proudly […]
Leadbelly is the grandfather of heavy metal. I had no idea. Nor did I realize how derivative Led Zeppelin was. Nor, frankly, had I ever given Zeppelin much thought at all beyond contemplating Stairway lyrics in angsty teenaged basements. I had wondered why there was no A in their Led, and now that I know, I’m keeping it to myself on principle. As to their name, it was predicted they would crash and burn like one. And did you know…
A friend messaged me looking for a witch. Is there a scavenger hunt I didn’t know about? Is there a non-drug induced apparition at your door that needs dispelling? No; he needed a spell “for good love. Or to attract good intentions. Or to be open to love.” I liked that he was open to the phrasing; as if he knew that somewhere in how we ask the question, we craft the limitations of our own answers…
Some days don’t go our way: we wake up late, hate all our clothes, stab ourselves in the eye with a hurried mascara wand and drop our keys while running for the bus. Then to the local trendy coffee shop, where the lineup gets us seething, and by the time we learn they have to make a new pot of our fave blend, and it’ll take ten minutes, something in us snaps. For every one hundred computer glitches, every hundred “vital” texts that didn’t…
Given the string of protests, nonsense (I’m looking at you, London, Ontario) and subsequent arrests lately — 226 in the Anti-Police-Brutality March, 94 students against tuition hikes at the Champlain bridge and an underwhelming 13 arrests at the London, Ontario riots (which if I’m reading this correctly, was just ridiculous, malicious chaos, and I hope they catch more of ‘em and lock them all up) — a lot of people will be heading to court in the next few months. Funny enough, I was there last summer…
