so they say

Black bears prefer to break into minivans, study says

Forest Lawn shooting not a shooting, police say

Flu shot refusals spark warning

Is Halloween getting too sexy?

‘Dr Doom’ sees more bubble trouble

First is usually best, Canadian study says

New rocket engine could make trips to Mars realistic

Slump fears linger for Alberta consumers

Household chores apparently more foreplay than work


Snorkelling off the Galapagos

Alberta politics just got exciting

Apple smashes forecasts, stocks hit record


Britain fails to exit recession

Armed standoff ends with surrender

Sicilian prefers prison to house arrest with wife

reverb

Election jitters dog city hall

Euthanasia damages trust in doctors

Stelmach defends Stelmach

now mulling enters the fray

Are whales killing porpoises on purpose?

Cops mull probe of balloon-boy family

Edmonton mulls no-kill policy at pound

Top celebrity retirement renegers

Burning bunnies help keep Swedes warm and cozy

Moon crash disappoints

unwieldy headlines: study

Train drags German mooner half naked along platform

Sir John A. Macdonald's suspected Scottish birthplace awaits wrecking ball

End discriminatory insurance practice of forced genetic-history 
exposure: Coalition

stop the rot to

Creating Canadian space food isn't easy
Is the Pill giving geeks an unfair chance?

Strong jobs data drive loonie

Notwithstanding prostitution

Swine flu less severe than feared?

Stop the rot to our right for free speech

so predictable

Extinct lemurs found alive

Calgary woman fights for right to raise chickens

Tiger was predictable

lackluster headlines lately

Taunts preceded Edmonton soccer game attack

Oldest known human ancestor rewrites evolution theories

How to wear: Long cardigan

Can we learn to be monogamous from animals?

Canada's stalled economy 'a shocker'

Mayor will 'white hat' Dalai Lama

MPs propose an army of peace professionals

Isreal, Hamas in mutual gestures on prisoners

Nudists avoid sudden eviction

Concrete things to do when your thinking about feminism becomes too abstract

Read this article, and also read the book when it comes out. And maybe lend some money through Kiva.

Check out this blog (Girldrive), and this one (Bust).

A very good week

for headlines:

Catholic students can fly again

Photography, celebrity and mutation

Canadian punches out UK soldiers

Jaclyn Smith is not dead: Jaclyn Smith

Move over, heart-shaped potato. Here’s a Buddha-shaped pear

It’s tradition but also rape

Warming up to Iceland

Tattoos no longer taboo

Phone number detailing lobster aid package actually a sex line

Source of acrid odor in Edmonton a mystery

B.C. mother of five killed, man arrested in “domestic homicide”

Let pandas dies out, says British naturalist

Earth to space station: Dream

Scientists make paralyzed rats run again

Don’t spare the feelings of communists

This week's headlines

Ignatieff’s secret leafy glen

Facebook dumbing friendships down?

Parents to blame for fat kids

Bait cars catch thieves: Calgary police

Ice cream can control your brain: study

English school kids vote to slaughter lamb they raised from birth

And a recording of me reading headline-poems that would be pretty good if I was speaking louder/more clearly. Oops.

ridiculous things

1. Near 17th avenue and 14th street, the Smoker's Corner is right next door to Health for Life Ltd.

2. On a concrete wall on Centre Street, just north of the bridge, is an awesome graffiti of a dog wearing sunglasses and the words "WEED POODLE!"
(I have to start bringing my camera to work with me.)

3. Googling the law the other day:

"you can't spell manslaguhter without laughter"

4. From a contract review:

"The Franchisee acknowledges that the Confidential Information is highly confidential."

5. In Black's Law Dictionary, Fifth Edition, 1979:

"Fighting words

Fighting words, which may constitutionally be prohibited, are words directed to the person of the hearer which would have a tendency to cause acts of violence by the person to whom, individually, the remark is addressed."

Abandoned attempt at listing lines of poetry that have stuck with me

1. I once had

...oh rose thou art sick the invisible worm that flies through the night through the howling storm has found out thy bed of crimson joy and his dark secret love does thy life destroy...

running through my head over and over in an anxious loop as I wandered around campus smoking cigarettes in grotty doorways over several months in second year of undergrad. At the time I thought Blake's mental illnesses could be transmitted through the words, and yet felt the poem acted as a sort of warding-off mantra. Love the poem but not the memories.

2. Margaret are you grieving
Over goldengrove unleaving
Leaves like the things of man you
Care for with your cold heart can you
etc.
[quoted from memory, could be totally wrong]

Good ol' Traintrack.

3. Single fish single fish single fish eggplant single fish sight.

I used this line in my thesis as an example of a sentence that prioritizes poetic function over the other Roman Jacobsian functions of language. I like how the sounds of "eggplant" are all low and full amid the rest of the S sounds, all high and thin.

graffiti revision

From a seat-back on the bus:


Lee Webb is always my man!

(I will kill any woman he hangs w.)
                          /\
                       other

It's a good thing she clarified that...

Ogresse Oblige

Below is a recording from the flywheel cover night earlier this month of me reading from Dorothy Trujillo Lusk's Ogresse Oblige.

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More recordings from the flywheel and other events around Calgary can be found here, courtesy of Dale Herrington.

I regretted that I didn't properly introduce Dorothy Trujillo Lusk and her work before I started reading -- I don't know why I always assume that everyone reads the same poets I do. Anyway, more on her here.

rob kindly comments on my newest chapbook, Bus Plunge (at first I typed Bus Plunger, that might be a better title).

Save the SSHRC

Potentially even more damaging to the arts than the proposed magazine funding guidelines: restricting SSHRC funding to "business-related degrees." WTF? Protest here.

Things I like

lately include:
17 seconds Issue 1, especially the Rachel Blau duPlessis piece - very sentency;

The Capilano Review's latest issue on the poetics of erasure - smart and pretty;

the Open Letter Summer 2008 issue on New Canadian Poetries - lots of writing by and about current and former Calgarians;

the Olive Reading Series and collective - no podcast of my reading last week, sadly, but a kind and welcoming audience, really engaging open mic, and lovely chapbook of my new writing, of which I have several copies to distribute, let me know if you're interested.

Olive reading

If you're in Edmonton this week, come see me read at the Olive series on Tuesday. I'll be reading from "Bus plunge," a brand new mini-ms the Olives are chapbooking.

headlines are my favorite drug

This week's dose, courtesy of cbc.ca, the Calgary Herald website, the Globe and Mail website, and the Calgary Sun box outside my office:

“Joy of Six”

“Nurses rack up record rebukes”

“Dolphins capable sea chefs”

“Teachers aims at Petrocan”

“Driver run over by own car”

“Ban stun gun use on young people”

“French couple cloaked in suspicion”

“Is that a pigeon in your pants?”

“Powder vets”

“Sex becoming ‘cultural wallpaper’”

“Birth raises ethical issues”