ed_rex

[Yoinked from sabotabby]

Meme: Pronoun/title/adjective check!

As in, "what I think of these pronouns/titles/adjectives as applied to me"

It/its: If you insist, but I'll be paying close attention to your tone of voice

She/her: No, but I don't really care. It used to happen now and again when I had hair — and wore it long

He/him: Yes, I am a cis male and pretty straight. This is accurate.

They/them: Sure, I'll answer to that. If the singular they was good enough for Shakespeare ...

Neopronouns (post them): I am pretty partial to Young. As in Young Edifice or Young Geoffrey. And I find that I like it more, the less true it becomes.

Mr: That's both of my late grandfather's but whatever.

Mx: If you must. But forgive me if I just say, "Eh? What?"

Miss: Not even for my daughter, if I can help it. Ms from birth to death.

Ms: Not for me, but see above, and note the lack of a period.

Ma'am: Please smile when you say that.

Sir: I'll answer to it, but prefer that you're tongue is in the proverbial cheek.

Mistress: Need I even answer this one?

Captain: I prefer the sound of "commander", even though I understand that is an inferior rank in most armadas.

Dr: I call you Doctor (note the lack of an abreviation).

Pal, buddy, friend, comrade, folks, etc: Pal and buddy — like boss — make me cringe for reasons I don't really understand, but please don't. Comrade makes me uncomfortable because it reminds me I'm not really doing much to advance the (or any) revolution. Folks is plural, but I don't mind being included. And nobody's ever called me Etc. Edifice, so I think we we're good to ignore that one.

Dude, bro, bruh: I can deal with Dude, but Young Edifice isn't so young as once he was, and bro and bruh start me shaking my fist at clouds.

Sis: Once or twice, if you're smiling, otherwise I'll just get confused.

Sib: Are we related by blood? Boi: No thank you. See my fist, clouds, above. But it's okay if you're talking about cats or other fauna. Maybe even adorkable plants.

Boy: Especially on the (soccer) pitch, yes.

Girl: Well, y'know, I do have a (handsome) penis.

Lady/ladies: See above.

Terms of Endearment (hon, sweetie, darling): As Sabs put it, depends on our relationship/whether you're from the American South or other linguistically colourful regions (Cape Breton, maybe).

“Feminine” compliments (pretty, beautiful, etc): I'm short, balding and 55 years old. I'll take it!

“Masculine” compliments (handsome, etc): Same.

Neutral compliments (cute, attractive, cool, etc): It should go without saying that you should use such terms to describe me!

Damn. I really do have better things to do, but baby seems to be teething and the last couple of nights have been a return almost to our brutal first two months as parents when sleep was an almost mythic state of being.

Yoinked from sabotabby's LJ.

( And cut for the protection of your friends' page. )

44. What song do you want played at your funeral?

I want more than one, but it certainly wouldn't hurt to include this one:

"In your status line list 10 books that have stayed with you. Don't take more than a few minutes. Don't think too hard. They don't have to be great works or even your favorites. Just the ones that have touched you."

These sort of lists are always nervous-making, but they're kind of fun — and maybe even a little interesting, too. Meme yoinked from Samuel R. Delany's facebook page. To which he seems pretty liberal about responding to friend requests.

Note that I arbitrarily limited myself to fiction. Non-fiction might make for another meme, another day.

1. Dhalgren (by Delany himself);


2. The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien;


3. Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking-Glass, by Lewis Carrol;


4. The Kraken Wakes, by John Wyndham;


5. Catch-22, by Joseph Heller;


6. Something Happened, by Joseph Heller;


7. The World According to Garp, by John Irving;


8. The Mars Trilogy (Red, Green, Blue), by Kim Stanley Robinson;


9. War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy; and


10. Barney's Version, by Mordechai Richler

I said "kind of fun" above, but the results of my not taking "more than a few minutes" to come up with a list of books "that have touched" me is more than a little disconcerting. For a number of reasons.

First, I confess to being a little embarassed by how genre the damned thing is? Where's Goethe's Faust? Where's The Magic Mountain or Julius Caesar? What happened to The Waves or The Edible Woman?

In short, nevermind genre, where are all the women at?

While I was (briefly) thinking about it, names like Le Guin and Russ quickly came to mind, but I rejected the former because I've been more moved by her non-fiction than her fiction, and for the latter, although The Female Man impressed hell out of me as a youth, I can scarecely remember it now — and I've re-read it more than once in the intervening years.

Virginia Woolf always left me cold. In truth, if I were to wipe the slate clean, I might replace the Tolstoy or Irving with Pride and Prejudice, but when you get right down it, I don't think I've read all that many women writers. Certainly as a percentage, it's much lower than chance — even in a genre like SF (and F) — would allow. (And, y'know, much as I loved it back in the day, The Mists of Avalon hasn't aged well at all.)

Be that as it may. The books that are on that somewhat arbitrary exercise in memory and prejudice share another commonality: I read most of them quite a long time ago, at least for the first time. The Lord of the Rings and Dhalgren are pools into which I've dipped again and again (and again), and with the exception of War and Peace, I've revisited the others all more than once. As for Tolstoy, I doubt I'll go there again; it's on the list more for how much his lunatic's 100 page diatribe on the inevitability of history and the impotence of the individual to effect change is what I remember more than anything else from the book.

Still, it's a somewhat instructive exercise. What are your top 10 most memorable books?

Nobody suggested that I do the fandom meme, but I took note of it on (guess who!) Sabotabby's Livejournal some time ago and thought it might be fun. And maybe, again, a way to kickstart this blog. (And nobody wants to hear about how I-can't-power-off-my-mobile-and-I-think-it's-broken-and-I-haven't-even-finished-paying-for-it-yet do they?)

So fandoms.

Shit. First of all, I deny that I even have a fandom (singular), let alone more than one. Sure, I tend to write about Doctor Who a little more than most people, but I'm engaging in a critical dialogue with pop culture itself, damn it!

Or maybe not. Onwards.

( To meme or not to meme? Your click will kill the cat - or not )

Your favourite film watched this year?

( Short version: I hardly watched any full-length movies in 2013, and none of them were really good. )

Your favourite book read this year?

( Think you can't be shocked? Think again! )

Your favourite album or song to listen to this year?

( Old white guy and young Oriental woman, oh yeah! )

Your favourite TV show of the year?

( The good, the bad and Jane Austen's revenge. )

Your biggest fandom disappointment of the year?

( Do you really have to ask? )

Your TV boyfriend of the year?

It's kind of cheating, but I'm going with Troy and Abed from Community, even if I have to reach back to 2012 for examples of their awesomeness.

Your TV girlfriend of the year?

Last Tango's Nicola Walker as Caroline. Who knew I'd fall in love with a sheep farmer?

Your biggest squee moment of the year?

Cheating again. The best Doctor Who multi-doctor Episode of all time. Seriously. And it's in Spanish. (And I"m done, so I'll leave you with them.

Despite appearances, I am not about to be beaten to a bloody pulp by fellow inmates of a correctional institution in the photo shown above. The photo was in fact taken on the soccer pitch at Carleton University on the 27th of July 2013, during a lull in a 7-on-7 match. And I am most likely gasping for air, not hurling invective at opposing players.

Yes, it's been a long time since I've posted here. A long time since I've posted much of anything anywhere, pretty much, beyond the delay blurts on Twitter and occasional comments here, on Livejournal or Facebook.

As those of you checking in on my Facebook or Twitter postings might know, I've been cycling a hell of a lot and holding my own (see above) in 7-on-7 soccer with and against players who are mostly 20 or so years younger than I am. And yes, I'm feeling good about that, even if my belly seems to show little or no signs of changing in response to the workouts my body's been getting.

I've also been working quite a lot, both at the Transportation Job and on various word and word-related projects. But not enough with the latter. In truth, when it comes to actually sitting down to write, I've been blocking more often than not; and when not blocking, my long-overdue ghost-writing project has been taking priority.

I'd like to change much of that (really I would!) and as a bit of self-encouragement, I am writing this post to re-introduce myself to whoever among those listed here and on LJ still have me on their reading lists. To that end, "A Memeish Thing", freely modified from one posted by LJ's earlier this month.

_____

Please copy the topics below, erase my answers and put yours in their place, and then post it in your journal! Please elaborate on the questions that would benefit from elaboration. One-Word-Answers seldom help anyone out.

FIRST NAME: Geoffrey, but answers to Geoff quite willingly. Some who know me well might have other appellations, but I prefer those remain between you and me.

AGE: 48. I know, I find it nearly impossible to believe also. But, as some wag once put it, getting older is better than the alternative. And yes, I realize that calling myself Young Geoffrey might strike you as hubristic, or worse. But I'm happy with it still and I figure that's what matters most.

LOCATION: The nation's Capital, not much more than a bom — stone's throw from Parliament Hill. Speaking of which, if you've never been, take the tour of the Library of Parliament; it is a remarkably beautiful building and well worth an hour acting like an actual tourist.

OCCUPATION: No thank you, I believe in personal, local, and national autonomy and self-determination.

Ahem. Driver, editor, writer and fledgling small-press publisher.

PARTNER: A wonderful woman who values her privacy. I am permitted to refer to her only as Raven, to admit that she hails from the Orient and that I have a few years on her. I count myself lucky to have that much dispensation.

KIDS: Not yet, but we're contemplating. And I like to think I've had some good influence on my brilliant, now 20-something, niece.

SIBLINGS: Two, a younger brother and older half-brother via my mother.

PARENTS: Both turning 80, both still alive and kicking. I help Dad with his online newsmagazine and Mum is about to go back on air with CBC Radio doing once-a-week commentaries.

PETS: Not just now.

Politics: In my blood, going back generations. Best described, perhaps, as an anarcho-socialist cynic who dreams of peaceful transition even as the psychotic thugs running our world seem hell-bent on provoking a global bloodbath. Normally an astute observer, I sometimes get taken in by soaring rhetoric; I was briefly fooled by Obama, among others.

3-5 BIGGEST THINGS GOING ON IN YOUR LIFE: (1) My relationship with Raven. (2) All this exercise; slap me if I turn into one of those ex-smokers who can't ever shut the fuck up about how awesome it is to get healthy ad nauseum (slap me if I'm already there). (3) The aforementioned ghost-writing project. (4) Getting my hands on the proof copy of The Old Man's Last Sauna, which I hope will be the first of many works of fiction published by the BumblePuppy Press. (5) Finding a way to influence the world, rather than just bitch about it to the quire.

Right. Let's see if that jumpstarts anything here — or even elsewhere. Meanwhile, how 'bout another hit of Montreal's Grimes?

Yes, a meme. Yoinked from KT.

The Rules: Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen albums you've heard that will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes. Tag fifteen friends, including me, because I'm interested in seeing what albums my friends choose. (Quoth KT, and I agree: I'm not tagging anyone... if you wanna do it, do it!)

1. The Beatles — Rubber Soul/Revolver: I didn't grow up in a family in which music played a significant role. My mum had a few records but during those years when I might have been developing my nascent tastes, why didn't have any electricity to speak of, so listening to them was a non-starter.

Came a time, though, when both electricity and a record player were at hand, and I had just seen Yellow Submarine on television (in black and white, but whaddya gonna do?). And my mother had copies of not one — but two! different records by the same group. "Let's try it!"

Well, holy moly. That wasn't my first exposure to popular music, but it was arguably my first conscious exposure, and to say I started out near the top is no understatement. Rubber Soul and Revolver marked The Beatles' transition from brilliant pop music to a long exploration of the possibilities of Art within rock 'n roll. Experiments that were also wonderful records to listen to, experiments not just for other musicians.

2. The Weavers — Reunion at Carnegie Hall: Before The Beatles for me, came the Weavers, a folk group nearly out of the dustbowl. Peter Seeger was its most famous member, and that the band had been black-listed during the McCarthy period, only made them more intriguing to me. (You didn't know I was preternaturally interested in politics and history? You must be new here. Welcome, please pull up a chair and set a spell.)

The songs, in retrospect, are primitive and the playing and singing arguably less than la crème de la crème, but I did and do love them and their playing. For the joy, the energy and the passionate commitment. I suspect my preference for live over recorded music stems from listening these songs over and over again.

3. Tom Lehrer — Songs by Tom Lehrer: Actually, this record wasn't live, and it's far from Lehrer's satirical best, but it nevertheless hit me a lot the way I think the 1950s version of Mad Magazine hit a generation or two of future cartoonists. Ludicrous football fight songs; songs about homicidal daughters, boy-scouts and hunters; about plagiaristic Russian mathematicians — Songs by Tom Lehrer was funny and had catchy tunes (naturally, since he stole most of them whole cloth from established standards). And of course it later led me to his masterpiece, That Was the Year that Was.

4. The Beatles — Abbey Road: What can I say about this album that hasn't been said a thousand times before. One side of the record didn't have a break in it! There were mysterious crickets chirping through the intro to one of the songs ...

And what songs!. The Beatles' last album was (arguably) their best. Certainly it was their most polished. And for two or three years, I listened it at least once a night, and usually twice. I destroyed two copies of the cassette, simply by playing them to death.

5. The Beatles — The White Album: Last Beatles record, I promise. When I was 12, "Revolution No. 9" was a bizarre revelation. All nine minutes of it, by turns creepy, exhilarating and always just plain strange. I got a friend in Quebec in some trouble because I played him the entire song on during a long-distance call. (Ian Pavelko, where are you now?)

6. Beethoven — 9th Symphony: The vocal parts in the third or fourth movement. My lord, what a powerful piece of music (when it's sung right; I've heard one version that turned the entire symphony to mush).

7. Neil Young and Crazy Horse — Rust Never Sleeps: I'm kinda cheating with this one; I'm talking about the movie, not the album. I was maybe 15 years old when I went to Toronto's original rep theatre, the Bloor Cinema with friends to see it. At the time I knew only the gentle Neil Young of Harvest, the wistful Neil Young of "Old Man" and "Helpless".

I think I sat through about 15 minutes of Crazy Horse's feedback and wailing guitars, pounding bass and ear-splitting drums before I rose in all of my teenage dudgeon and stomped back to the box-office, where, insisting this was a fraud! a sham!, I demanded my $0.99 back.

Quite rightly, the ticket-taker told me I was out of luck.

I love hard Neil now, but at the time, my goodness I was appalled!

8. The Grateful Dead — The Grateful Dead Movie: I know, another concert film. Another cheat. I don't care.

I was 15 or 15 when I saw this one. Some friends had scored some acid and I was going to have my first trip. We were going to see Kubrick's 2001 at the Cinesphere, but it was sold out and someone hit on seeing the Dead film at the Bloor instead.

I hadn't much liked the Dead by this point, but I was already starting to giggle maniacally, so I wasn't going to argue. I couldn't have argued.

This two was a revelation. The Grateful Dead in concert were an entirely different animal from the Grateful Dead in the studio. Sloppy, meandering ... and utterly alive and unpredictable!

There's little doubt the acid helped open that particular door for me. I've been a sucker for 20-minute versions of three-minute songs ever since (and I'm listening to a live Dead show as I type this). But I'll never forget the sheer joy I felt for hours and hours after the movie ended, as "Casey Jones" looped enlessly through my head.

9. Ricky Lee Jones — Rickie Lee Jones: I first heard this in my friend Vern's room. It was a recent discovery of his and I was so pleased he shared it with me. Jones' whispery and knowing (and so, sexy) voice over top of jazz-tinged pop or soft-rock was a melodic wonder and a more or less new form of music to me — or so I thought at the time. Looking back, I see it on a continuum with the folk/jazz side of pop music which seems to be my primary interest.

10. Prince — Sign 'O the Times: Prince has made a lot of brilliant music, but he's on this list in particular for "I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man", seven minutes of carefully-structured studio magic that sounds utterly, thoroughly, as if it was a lucky recording of live spontaneity.

11. Ani Difranco — Living in Clip: Speaking of live music, my introduction to Ani Difranco was through this record and what it record it was! Political, confidently feminist and with a sense of humour, I though for a while that Difranco was the second coming of Bob Dylan. I've backed off on that (and in fact have sold almost my entire collection of CDs, holding on only to this one), but this record remains a brilliant piece of music. If you don't know Difranco, start here; if you do and haven't heard it — my god! — remedy that deficiency now!

12. Bob Dylan — Slow Train Coming: Speaking of Dylan, how in the hell has it taken me until number 12 to get to him? And why Slow Train Coming? I mean, Christian Dylan, really?

Really. It's not his best record by any stretch of the imagination (that would be Another Side of Bob Dylan, or maybe Desire or Bringing It All Back Home or Blonde on Blonde or Blood on the Tracks), but it's a damned good one. And it's one I won't soon forget because my friend, then called Paul, pointed out through his nearly apoplectic laughter, that even a Christian Dylan had a sense of humour. "Man Gave Names to all the Animals" is one of the goofiest pieces of faith ever etched into vinyl.

13. The Indigo Girls — Back on the Bus, Y'all: I don't care what anybody says. They write great songs, they're good players and one of the two has a voice that gives me the shivers. "Closer to Fine" is (excuse the pun) one of the finest pop songs around.

14. The Grateful Dead — Reckoning: Another record whose cassette version I literally played to death. Live and acoustic Dead. What's not to love?

15. John Lennon — Plastic Ono Band: Lennon's best solo record, and in some ways maybe the best Beatles or Beatles-related album of them all. Lennon stripped away almost all of the extras that had come to characterize The Beatles, leaving only the raw power of his words and music, his naked voice and the heartbreaking songs themselves.

This is the record that every angsty teenager tries to make; but only Lennon managed to also make a record that is not only worth listening to, but that is in fact, one of the best 30 or 40 minutes in the history of rock and roll.

Well, that took a "bit" more than 15 minutes and I missed all sorts of records that should be here, but it was fun nonetheless. You might want to give it a try yourself.

The meme continues ...

27. Along similar lines, do appearances play a big role in your stories? Tell us about them, or if not, how you go about designing your characters.

Floyd Laughren, a long-time family friend and a politician whom the late, much-lamented Frank Magazine called "the only straight-shooter in the Rae cabinet" once let me in a little not-quite-straight-shooting secret. We were talking about the importance of remembering people's names.

"I just say," he told me, "'I'm sorry, but I've forgotten your name,' as we're shaking hands. When they tell me, I then laugh and say, "No, no! I meant your last name!"

Despite the face that I'm not a politician, and that my brief term on the Board of the Directors of the Toronto Free-Net was probably my last association with electoral politics, it's a trick I could have used more often than I care to admit.

More than a few times in my life, I've been stopped on the street by some stranger calling out my names. (Like Charlie Brown, people who don't know me quite well tend to refer to me by both first and last names; does this happen to you folks or is it something particular to me?)

I say "stranger" for dramatic effect only, as it invariably turns out that I have in fact met — and have usually spent some time with — nearly anyone who calls out my name from across the street (the internet — hi Liz! — has changed this a little, but mostly it remains true) and, most often, a quick exchange of names, will remind me of who the person is and what kind of a relationship we share(d).

But as I thinkt that serves to illustrate that while I don't suffer from prosopagnosia, my temporal lobes have never made face recognition an area of advanced study.

In other words, "do appearances play a big role in" my stories? Not as such, no, and especially the faces of my characters.

( ... if not, [tell us] how you go about designing your characters. )

( Click to see all the questions )

The meme continues, but I'm starting to think it should have been "25 days of writing" or even 20 days. But that's okay by me. I have a bit of a hangover for the first time in several months (yes, Raven has been a very good influence on Young Geoffrey!) and work to do — so today's question being a lame one indeed doesn't much bother me.

25. Do any of your characters have pets? Tell us about them.

Several of them do, usually dogs, but one had some kind of alien reptiloid dog-equivalent. It was killed by some blood-thirsty elves, but so was its owner and the death of the old woman was meant to be considerably more affecting. The dog-equivalent was just collateral damage — sorry animal lovers.

Otherwise, pets haven't yet played a significant role in any of my stories. Those that have been there have usually been based on animals I have known, but as I said: they've never been significant characters and talking about them would be even more boring than it would be to hear about that Cute Thing My Cat Used To Do — possibly of interest to cat-lovers over a coffee or a drink, but of little or no interest to a reader of fiction. Or of a blog.

And ... exeunt.

( Click to see all the questions )

23. How long does it usually take you to complete an entire story — from planning to writing to posting (if you post your work)?

Over the years, I had a number of stints working for polling companies — you know, those people who call you at dinner-time and who want to ask you "just a few quick questions", from Statistics Canada on down through the food chain.

The most common frustration from those who chose to respond — and one of the reason I so seldom respond to polls of any kind, unless they're meant more to be fun than anything else — is that they almost invariably try to force the world (and the person answering the questions) to fit into a reductionist's dreamscape of either/or questions and answers.

This isn't so bad when the question is whether you prefer to the Montreal Canadiens to the Toronto Maple Leafs (hint: the correct answer to this question is "Yes"), but not so good when it has to do with morally complex questons about public privacy or private morality.

( 23. How long does it usually take you to complete an entire story — from planning to writing to posting (if you post your work)? )

( Click to see all the questions )

21. Do any of your characters have children? How well do you write them?

The perils of not taking a sneak-peek ahead: Yesterday's entry, and especially the extensive excerpt from The Valley of Shabathawan would have served as a pretty conclusive reply to both questions.

But in case you didn't read Question 20A then or don't want to now, I'll sum it up by saying, "Yes" and "Quite well, thank you."

Still, that's not quite all. The question itself strikes me as a little weird, and not in a good sense. I'm tempted to go in for some armchair psychoanalysis of the meme's creator, but I'll just note it instead.

"Do any of your characters have children? How well do you write them?"

The presumption that children are not characters in and of themselves vexes me the more I look at it. I don't know about other writers, but when I write children, they are characters (mewling and puking babes in arms notwithstanding, perhaps).

I said I don't want to get into any armchair psychoanalysis, but armchair sociology isn't quite the same thing. ( Click for more! )

( Click to see all the questions )