Indexed Cards

INDEX CARD 4

 

SKI SHOW 1

 

On Tuesday evening, we walked to Windsor Park (which, since the town had been founded in 1868 and only sparsely settled for some sixty years, had not seen its name change from Saxe-Coburg and Gotha Park probably, unless the mails had come in chronically exceedingly late), to join an estimated two hundred people in watching the weekly ski show. The music over the loudspeakers was obnoxiously current, and familiar to the majority; it seemed the days of pumping out 'Raise a Little Hell' ad infinitum were of the days of the Triceratopsini. The programme itself consisted of a sequence of tricks that became more elaborate, all performed within a fictional framework involving superheroes. (The only one I knew nothing of was Loki. Who is this Loki?) The little kids sat, with their feet dangling, at the edge of the wooden pier running parallel to the water's edge, ready to get splashed intentionally or unintentionally. For the end of the show, performers donned 'flyboards' (new to us) to rise, standing, above the lake. Flyboards are powered by the water jets of jetskis, to which the flyboards are connected via long thick corrugated black plastic hoses.

 

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INDEX CARD 2

 

K‑ B‑

 

Having arrived and having stored all our stuff in our cabin, we went for our first venture into town, hungry for a lunch at the Bala Bay Food & Spirits. Arm in arm we proceeded along two brief cottage roads, past signs such as Husband and Hodgkinson, until we reached mighty Highway 169 which ran from Gravenhurst to Foot's Bay and Lake Joseph Road. Bala Bay Food & Spirits, attached to the hotel formerly known as the Bala Bay Inn (currently kept as the quarters for the employees of the Mariott in Minett). We sat on the patio and a waitress appeared. She was, in two phrases, utterly charming and moderately ditzy. She talked about my mate's hair and how her opinion meant something because she'd been to hairdressing school (where she'd received the second of her three degrees). She bounced off with our orders, then returned to confirm them. Her mind seemed to be on the subject of hair, though she didn't compliment mine (which I believe was a serious oversight). We had a fried panzerotti and a Bala club wrap, along with one glass of wine and two pints of Bala Bay Brew.

 

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INDEX CARD 9

 

NIGHTS

 

For a long time, I used to go to bed late. For a week, it was not the case. I dearly hope to soon enough return to my late nights and morning confusions. [Ed. note: He has.] Yes; on each evening, after having dined on fine barbecue or fine grilling (alongside some rather more delicate plant matter, and chilled white wine) down by the lake in the last hour before sunset (i.e. between eight and nine p.m.), we would retire to the sun porch, to escape the dusky insects of early July. There we would watch, for some time, the lake and in it the reflection of the trees across the lake, and as we watched how the solar agitations of the water lessened, causing the lake's surface to flatten such that the reflected outlines of the pines so distant became vividly plain, we would grow tired of seeing light. We would go into our cabin, prepare to retire, turn off the lights, and be startled by how dark it was inside the cabin. In an hour, nothing could be seen. The moon was waning that week, and by Thursday we had no moon at all.

 

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INDEX CARD 7

 

FISH

 

Though I have fished for fish before, back in, I believe, 1973, I must admit I would be nonplussed if presented with a "rod" and a "reel". Verily, I would not know which was which! Nonetheless, on Thursday evening, after we had finished our lakeside dine, our attention was drawn to some activity over by the boathouse, which was in front of the large white cottage (also a rental) beside our cabin. We have seen its occupants, and we had even spoken to the female parent and her two daughters not three days before. So we swallowed our arrogance and walked over to see what all the action was concerning. The two little girls were fishing with what appeared to be children's "gear", while their father was giving them instruction and encouragement. And my goodness they were catching a great number of fish, which Father would unhook and release back into the water. I do believe we saw some seven fish caught and let go in our fifteen minutes at the boathouse. Father, after having unhooked the fish, would stick his index finger in each fish's mouth and display it to the children. A happy family!

 

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INDEX CARD 3

 

POWER

 

Depasting from our repart, we proceeded to walk through the quaint town of Bala, Ontario. We espied some construction activity near the world-famous Bala Falls, and as we neared we discovered a very large square hole next to the aforementioned falls. As I have said, the hole was large; within it, scurrying about, several men like ants were working with light equipment while high overhead stood a crane hoisting this and that hither and yon. Handy signage informed us that this was going to be a hydro-electric plant, and that everyone was proud to be entering a new æra, for there had been a power plant on that very site prior to 1974. "Hurrah!" we cried. "Modernity!" Proceeding further, we found many signs that appeared to be in opposition to the Stalin-worthy electrification project, and we strangely had changes of hearts. The townsfolk seemed all opposed to the project, and we were swayed. The beauty of the town would be ruined. A natural wonder would be obliterated. "Boo!" we shouted. "Conservation!" And I, happily because of the two pints, returned to the Hellish pit, and, in full view of God and Man, urinated fulsomely into it.

 

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INDEX CARD 6

 

LEATHER

 

My beloved got word, during her daily dawn walk through town, that there was to be a 'farmer's market' a small ways down #38, in Jaspen Park, so to that locale we ambled early Wednesday afternoon. We had some difficulty getting across the various roads due to the heavy traffic that seemed determined to separate us from our preferred terminus. At last we were on the grounds of the market. And what was there? I hear you asking. First we came upon a large quadrangle of fruits and vegetables, and as my beloved examined the lumpy things I went off to see what I could see. Under a pavilion I went, where I found candles and other gimcrackery for cottagers and guests, but in the midst I found a belt-maker with his leathers and tools a-ready. Gaining his attention, I requested he notch a belt for me. I noticed several books nearby, all with the same authorship, and also copies of dear Susanna Moodie's Roughing it in the Bush. The leather-worker was also a writer and editor. The Moodie was finely bound, but I didnot buy it because I didnot wholly trust the editorial procedures thereinscribed.

 

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INDEX CARD 5

 

SKI SHOW 2

 

The flyboarders would do backflips twenty feet in the air. They were a very uncanny sight. Then, as an even bigger finale, the emcee called on all the little kids "who wanna get wet!" to come to the long dock running perpendicular to the pier, and somewhat on the order of sixty children ran to the dock to stand waiting. Once a stasis was obtained, sans juvenile jostling and prepubescent pushing, the flyboarders proceeded to jigger back and forth from high up in the air, towering over the tots, to spray and splash the lot of them with the aureoles of their 60 mile-per-hour jetski blasts. The kids leapt about as they got drenched one and all, and the music was blasting them too.

If I had been eight years old, I would have been down there with them. I would have laughed with them and I would have gotten soaked to my underwear with them. I felt the urge to join them: but sensibly I held back, for reasons obvious to anyone familiar with our current hyper-puritanical climate. However, even an old man can remember what it was like to get wet clothes.

 

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INDEX CARD 8

 

REVIEW

 

During our week-long stay, I found the time to read the entirety of a novel‑save for the index closely‑called "House of Leaves" by one Mark Z. Danielewski. So, idly, here is my review. It concerns a character who finds a bunch of pages relating to a house in Virginia and of I think I'm done with post-modernism. Sheesh! When one guy burns up a book which is obviously "House of Leaves" and where this other guy finds a band playing songs based on "House of Leaves" and sees the book and checks out the book and sees his own name on the cover and they got it from the Internet and I mean really it's such a lame device and it's done twice as if this is mind-blowing like we haven't seen this trick a hundred fuckin' times in the last forty fuckin' years! Really through the whole thing there's like a good short story and the rest is fuckin' filler, like 400 pages of filler. No wonder I don't bother with anything that's being written today, it fuckin' stinks out loud. Borges instead, Nabokov instead, Pynchon instead. No-one born after 1964 is any fuckin' good.

 

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INDEX CARD 10

 

ANIMALS

 

Where was I? The creatures of our lakeside cabin are more often heard than seen. A sizable-sounding bullfrog who inhabits the water-grasses down near our dining table senses the presence of anyone nearby and ceases erping, thereby making himself effectively invisible. At the other extreme, a loon who has taken to bobbing about in the lake is a newcomer, and a surprising one since it means there is a new couple on the lake. Loons float very low in the water, whereas ducks float high, which is how one may definitively distinguish the one from the other. Two other notes from an amateur naturalist are as follows. The local chipmunks seem to be doing well. Their burrows are well-kept, and I resisted the urge to drop firecrackers down them. How can I resist the insect world? The monarch butterflies were about, and one of the clumsy buggers fluttered and buttered drunkenly its way around me on Friday morning before, fearing death by boredom, it circled the cabin, signifying an end to our relationship. A very pretty ginger caterpillar was found in our clothing, and we released it to the wilds of the wooden steps. Hail, fellow!

 

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INDEX CARD 1

 

PACKING

 

We have travelled lightly, two-baggedly, for so many years, it was no great challenge this time around. Surprisingly enough, having arrived at our destination, we found we had not forgotten a single thing. Now, I can only speak of my own activities, but I packed four pairs of socks, two underpants, three shirts, a long pair of pants and a long-sleeved shirt and my denim jacket (for it might have gotten cold if we would have chosen to set outside a-night, which as happen would have it we did not do), deodorant, bug spray, sun screen, lubricant for anal sex, two packages of playing cards, a nice load of poker chips in a zip-lock bag, spyglasses, Collected Ghost Stories by M.R. James, Strong Opinions by Vladimir Nabokov, two issues of the TLS, one issue of the New Criterion, two books of origami designs and about 2/3rds of a package of 25cm² paper, and the oat pillow atop all of it. In my knapsack I put my music equipment (iPod and portable sound system, my Kindle, eight packages of cigarettes, nail clippers, bus tickets, notepad, pens, and newspaper of 7 July 2018. I'd hoped to forget nothing.

 

*

 

We'd heard tales of such events, but we never thought anything of the sort would happen to us nobodies. Julie complained of a stomach upset early one evening, and it proceeded to get worse within the next couple hours. So we went and caught a bus to the closest hospital, and we waited for some fifteen minutes. A doctor took Julie off for an examination, and I waited and waited. A couple hours later the doctor came out. He told me Julie had given birth to octuplets. I was surprised. The doctor took me to see my eight newborns.

They were awfully cute, I must admit, but I was worried. Julie and I weren't prepared for this. We'd never discussed having a family. Plus, suddenly, there were five times more of us needing lodging in our two bedroom apartment. Where to start? How to start?

They let me visit Julie in her hospital bed. She looked a bit weathered by the whole thing. She said, "That was all kinda painful."

Then the hospital discharged her and our babies. They gave us a couple empty liquor boxes to put the kids in, and we took the bus home. Home sweet home.

 

*

 

The water of the river smelled sweeter when we returned in the fall. The shivery trees were shedding in the evening wind. The sky was blue and splotched with white like no other time all year.

Something screamed across the river.

The river water widely filled the chasm before us, like a silver knife slicing east and west. The river deep across brought a paradox involving an arrow to mind though the connection was a forced and unnatural juxtaposition. Who'll pour the wine?

A tree across the river jumped.

The plastic goblets floated out of the basket and settled roughly on the grass. The bottle upturned to third-fill them. The land brought forth a cloth 3x3 in feet to lay upon the slope and legs with knees bent in the fall evening unlike any fall evening that year.

The water hued pinkish.

The moon became suddenly noticeable over the trees of what one might think would be the other side of the river. Has the moon ever been compared to a Cyclopean eye? was wondered. A rather odd eye, with half to left or right sliced away? For a moment, no-one was looking at the moon.

Who dreams of darkness?

 

*

 

And they're off

'Round the turn

70 miles an hour

11 miles an hour

Steel polo mallets swinging

Smashing slapping and mauling

Because nothing's worthwhile

And our minds are super dupers

 

There's the line

'Tween one and two

Some are down below

Any left to screw?

There're still 1,000 contestants

With the peashooters coming out

While high in the sky of heaven

An alien Icarus is going low now

 

This is tiring me

Where's the stand

With the hot dogs?

I'm getting thirsty

There was a time long long ago

When everything was all a-piece

Which then cracked lengthwise

And has been cracking ever since

 

Wheels are all off

Engines are sanded

Windshield's broke

Can't recline seat

Now you're grist for the mill

Of the Gods and their Gods

Approaching that hairy S turn

With family in the back seat

 

Bring out the bubbly

For one last cheer

Smokem if you gottem

Don't mind the rug

As we celebrate these our killers

Who do the deeds dirty cheaply

Dispassionately cutting throats

And stamping red on the receipts

 

The race is run

And no-one lost

A quiescence settles on the moor

And birds look to the turbines

To chop themselves through

COPYRIGHT 21 JUNE 20--?

Have you ever been involved in a television production?

Have you ever been involved in a just compensation or just remuneration dispute?

Have you ever dreamed of $700,000, with $140,000 more every year for as long as the syndication deals last?

Have you ever digitally made a mock-up credits reel intended to be used for a television pilot and only for a television pilot?

Can you finish the sentence: "I didn't know for a long time about my rights being infringed because I...."?

Have you ever been born in February?

Weren't you one of the people who fought against the copyright complaint filed 20 June 2018 by one Gill Dettweiler?

Have you been to a television school, and aren't you banging your head on the wall because you weren't paying enough attention to the course on media law with reference to the SEVEN BIGGEST MISTAKES relating to the foundation of a small production company?

Did you ever help out an acquaintance and a friend of an acquaintance, having met them by chance in a bakery restaurant that also served liquor alongside the knishes and borscht?

Did they (the acquaintance and the friend of the acquaintance) buy you a drink, knowing as they did you were looking for work, and consequently low on funds, and give you the inside scoop on the television pilot they were raising funds for?

Have you ever been blissfully unaware of something for years only to have it brought to your attention whereupon you found yourself losing sleep and imagining all that money can buy?

Have you ever been born on the 7th of any month?

Did you imagine your life to possibly have been different than it currently is, and have you ever tried to enumerate the number of paths which would have arrived at a greater net happiness for yourself, and have you ever lost count doing so?

Have you ever had a 'thing' for computers that caused you to learn how to code in C++ at the age of seventeen?

Have you ever killed a friend of an acquaintance in cold blood?

Have you ever considered settling down and the purchase of a house in the suburbs?

Have you ever failed a driving test?

Have you ever failed at nearly everything you ever tried to do that was prospectively worthwhile?

Have you ever been in a court of law, risibly arguing a case of copyright?

Did you ever in all your years imagine what prison is really like, and find later that you'd gotten it almost entirely wrong?

Can you match images with music?

Have you ever seen ordinary Japanese commercial television, between, say, the hours of seven and nine on any given evening?

Have you read Bleak House, A Frolic of His Own, and The Recognitions? Did you learn anything from these books?

What would be your unrehearsed reaction to someone who told you on the telephone: "I'm sorry, this is all water under the bridge. We had some kind of a verbal agreement. I remember you said: 'Whatever?'"

Did you ever wake up one morning after having had a dream about an acquaintance in which he bought you a drink, after which you noticed you had not been wearing clothes for quite some time?

Have you ever spent a drunken evening writing computer code?

Has the result ever been thirty seconds long, with public domain music, dummy credits, stock photography treated with tons of effects, and all from open source software, and (unfortunately for you) fully moddable?

Have you ever lived in a chaotic house with several strangers?

Have you ever read an online newspaper article that changed your life?

What is your favourite special effect?

Have you ever seen, in your mind's eye, your income quadruple? Wasn't it a glorious sight?

Ever discover you are entitled to a percentage of a profit, profit being some six trillion yen?

Did you?

Have you?

Can't you answer?

Have you ever searched online for information about copyright lawsuits?

Ever cold-called a law firm?

Have you ever had a lawyer surprise an acquaintance with a telephone call?

Did the lawyer later tell you that the acquaintance could barely recall who you were?

How familiar does the statement "I never thought we'd have to plan for that, you see, it upsets our whole business model" sound?

How many times have you failed? Have you answered that question already?

What do you think of childbirth, basinets, baby food, short pants, colourful toys, television, meals with family, schools, nudity, pussy, tits, petting, humiliation, cruelty, graduations, and work, work, and work?

What do you think about castles, mansions, yachts, race horses, bottomless bank accounts, European tours, royalty, princesses, models and actresses, space travel, and power, power, and power?

What was your first clue?

Do you like problems that have no solutions?

Didn't you once write a game with pillars that shifted regularly left and right and up and down and wasn't the goal to get from top left to lower right? Wasn't that a solutionless, and indeed pointless, game?

When you turned over to the acquaintance and the friend of the acquaintance the program of the dummy opening credits of their television pilot were you thinking or were you not thinking that things could go far, farther than you ever imagined?

How much voyeurism have you committed, and how much shame ensued from these events?

Have you ever seen a television show (running four seasons) about a wacky gang of caterers who cater to the high and the low, whether a wedding, a funeral, a frat dissolution party, a bubble boy birthday, a terrorist meeting, a G-20, all the while having wacky problems with their wacky friends and wacky parents and (in one case) a wacky (and smart-assed) daughter, and was the show in Japanese?

And have you ever remembered how a television program had been explained to you as being about a small group of sombre morticians who cater to the high and low, whether etc., and that it would quite obviously be in English?

Have you ever been suicidal and hopeless even though you had serious trouble knowing exactly what you were grieving for?

Do you have any idea how long it takes to get through a copyright case in which multiple countries and principalities are involved?

Have you ever considered being voluntarily committed?

Have you ever had someone recommend voluntary commitment?

Has anyone ever begun proceedings intended to have you involuntarily committed?

Have you ever used Facebook?

Have you made 'friends' with acquaintances?

Has an acquaintance posted humblebrag on Facebook about how difficult it is to be suddenly wealthy, 'because Japan'?

Have you ever walked around for an entire day thinking about the phrase 'Your past comes back to haunt you'?

Do you regret what you know and wish you did not know?

Are you involved in a legal dispute and are you at the extreme limits of your knowledge?

Are you currently paranoid? If so, when did you start feeling that way?

How old are you? Seriously, how old are you?

How much time have you spent on this, and what's it worth per word?

Where did you go wrong?

Didn't you think, weren't you certain, that the television program would go nowhere?

When you saw it on Facebook, did you at first think it all looked so familiar? Were you convinced after the thirty seconds?

Can you recite the alphabet? How about backwards?

Can you count the number of times you've been black-out drunk?

When you told your only friend: "I've seen a Japanese television show that used my graphics for the credits, only they changed the text of my credits, and they could do it because I gave all the code to them instead of a rendering," how did he respond? Did he say: "Did you get any money from it?"

How's the lawsuit coming along?

When you called up your acquaintance, were you nervous? Did you know how to broach the subject?

Did you actually say: "See you in court?"

Are you more sap than sucker or more sucker than sap?

How did you track down the friend of the acquaintance? How did you find his phone number, and then his address?

Did you think you could get away with it?

Was your happiest moment one minute long? Or are you, as an Archimedean, a believer in the fact that one's happiest moment must be of an infinitesimal duration? Or do you ignore that logical conclusion, saying instead: With a bottle of wine I ran down a hill, and I could not fall, and I was perfect, for one minute?

Why were you prepared to take (it) out (on) the friend of the acquaintance rather than the acquaintance?

Do you think that since a court case snails along, one is justified in seeking an almost vigilante justice, or do you think it's much simpler to conclude jealousy was the root cause? Did I shock you there?

Did you ever feel the hairs of your neck stand up like you were dreaming of a dark room when you saw something on a screen that reminded you uncannily of something dimly remembered?

How would you get inside a locked house in the middle of the night?

If you know that a certain individual has a small dog as watch dog, how will you incapacitate the dog? Will you feed it, mute it, or kill it?

Do you think psychopaths feel remorse? Do they differ from you? Why or why not?

Is that a banging on the door, or is it the birch tree hitting the window?

How can one say, if one did not know that something they had contributed to had netted some ¥6,000,000,000, that one had been robbed? Ever thing of that? Smart guy?

Didn't you chop down that birch tree? Or were you merely intending to do so?

Did you know that copyright lawsuits are rarely settled within one's lifetime? Did you know that John Bonham (†) is still being sued for how his band ripped off so many artists?

Do you have any idea how things turned out this way?

Why could you not accept being a loser?

Sorry, that was a leading question.

Do you find there's something repugnant in being a loser? Don't you think losers can lead fulfilling lives?

If one is willing to kill the friend of an acquaintance, why cannot one kill instead the acquaintance? Why skip the middle man?

Do you hear people yelling outside? Do you not think you should go to the door and find out what they want?

Do you think you'll ever sleep again?

Don't you hear them coming up the stairs? Does the Law require a long arm, or can it get by with arms of a normal length?

Any last words?