blinkit

Bedbug survivorship

Bedbug update: They are still here. I have killed a few more spotted on search and destroy missions along my wooden bed frame. I've captured one live (they can live for months without feeding) and am keeping it for interrogation. If it doesn't talk soon about the location of its comrades, I'll hang it under my bed from a tiny, tiny rope as a warning to the others. Meantime, people are very sympathetic when I talk about my problem. They also tend to take a step back an inch or two. I've already been de-invited from one party. Just in case. But that's OK. I am a bedbug survivor and I will prevail.

I've learned a few things. The web is enormously helpful in providing information--there are whole blogs devoted to bedbugs, which I'll link to in coming days. Basically I could have had this problem for awhile, since your chances of spotting one of these nocturnal, sly critters is not very good. They are expert at hiding. Bites are one way to reveal an infestation, but not everyone reacts to the bite. (I can't say I've had any bad reactions, and I have sensitive skin. But I'm wondering if Casper my cat is the main course and I'm just a side dish. He's here all the time, and I'm not.) The bite is basically benign. Bedbugs are not considered a health threat. They're just creepy and very hard to eradicate.

I am sleeping in my bed. I made the strategic decision not to sleep elsewhere in the apartment, like my sofa, because I didn't want the bugs to follow me there and colonize the sofa (assuming they haven't done so already). So I'm offering myself as a temporary target to keep them in place and so I know where they are. So far, I've slept well, although last night every time I felt a twinge on my skin, I went for my flashlight. That's just psychological panic, because apparently you can't feel them biting and inserting their feeding tubes into you (I told you they were creepy). But I will probably toss the mattress and the frame, something I was going to do next year anyway, since both are years old. I'll wrap the mattress in plastic before I do, so I don't spread the bugs around, such as in my hallway or in the building hallway. Same for the disassembled bed frame. In the meantime, I'll have to vacuum almost every day, continue to clear my closets and shelves and get rid of every trace of clutter. Tomorrow I call pest companies, since that will be the ultimate step and, from everything I've read, the only way to finally beat them is to nuke them. More as it happens.

Adventures with cars: I'm also learning this week about brake lights. Never changed one before in my life, but when my rear brake light went out, I had to learn. I changed the light just fine, but somehow shorted out the brake light fuse in doing so. I'm learning about fuses, too. So far, I've made two trips to Canadian Tire and spent about five hours on this sucker. In order to find out which fuse on the fuse box does what, I also spent an hour searching for my car manual. I tossed stuff around in my bedbug-infested apartment, swearing and annoying Casper, before I finally remembered I left the manual in ... the car. It's been that kind of week.

Today's bLINKit: PBS Frontline World looks at NATO in Afghanistan, and how we're not so quickly winning the war. (Video of the show is available online.) It includes a close look at a Canadian Forces hearts and minds effort in a Taliban-controlled village. I haven't seen it all, but it's free of the usual rah-rah coverage we get in Canada--it shows both the desire to help on the part of soldiers and the frustrations they encounter in trying to turn the country around. "It's just a bandaid," says one.

And my regular Courier column, featuring reader responses to my previous column on words and phrases I want banned from good writing.

Writing Wednesday: Process, challenge and other useless words

WMD: Today's Courier column outlines a few words I loathe. Yes, I have issues.

Today's bLINKit: Salon asks what's with the Dylan song in BSG? And a Salon interview with the guy that's behind the series. Nice hair. Plus, a former B.C. teacher explains why he left the profession after a decade and a half of losing his mind.

Tuesday: the "cool" theory of literature; cool bikes; "24" watch

Today's bLINKit: Since I'm quoting people so far this week, this comment is taken from JaqPike's friend Corey, in an email to JaqPike, about one way to define a novel (and how to write one):

The Cool Theory of Literature states that a reader finds a given work of literature powerful, accessible, fun, whatever, in direct accordance to how closely his idea of what's cool aligns with the writer's. Which is a pretty simple idea, but start applying this to Kundera (or even clever French writers) and it works just fine. But the theory goes further than this. It provides a mechanism for generating literature.

To generate literature according to the Cool Theory, start with the following internal address: "And now, I'm going to tell you something really cool." Then proceed to do so.

The novel, under the Cool Theory, can be understood as the most efficient delivery mechanism for Cool Stuff.

So THAT's what a novel is.

Today's bLINKit2: I still like the gears on my mountain bike, and I'll never give up hand brakes, but these bikes are indeed cool.

WMD: Jack Bauer on 24 is the angel of death, not just for his opponents but for any of his luckless partners. At least this season. Agents partnered with Bauer have minimal life expectancy, and are the new red shirts of television. In the past two episodes, the unfortunate slobs who got paired with him in the field didn't even have names. Dead agents, we hardly knew ye. In tonight's episode, one lasted maybe two minutes before he got offed. You'd think CTU's agents' union would have something to say about this. At least increase their hazard pay if Bauer comes running their way and says, "You're with me!" To which they should reply, "I don't think so." (Last season, the producers and writers of the show gave Bauer only one partner. He survived the season, but not before having his hand lopped off in the name of national security.) Tonight's episode was good. Last week's was great, in terms of pacing and tension, so nicely put together, but the shooting down of Air Force One seemed a tad anticlimactic. The president was a minor character, just asking to be done in, and in another life would probably have been paired up with Bauer as a sidekick agent. Plus, in a day which featured a major train derailment, the kidnapping of the secretary of defence, the meltdown of a nuclear reactor, an EMP bomb detonating in Los Angeles, and a plethora of murders, kidnappings and torture incidents, one plane going down with a replaceable politician aboard doesn't seem as serious. Tonight's episode explained why that was a problem. What a conniving and clever plotter Marwan is. And the reappearance of Mike the political operative, a heavy from season two, can't be good news.

Monday: Can fascists write good novels?

Today's bLINKit: I pulled this from William Gibson's blog, specifically from his October 2004 archives (this one's Oct. 24). I hate running whole passages, but with apologies I can't seem to form a permalink off of his post. But it's good, so:

E. M. Forster maintained that didactic novels were, invariably, inherently less good -- as novels. If an author's politico-religio-social agenda is what directly drives the work, I take that to mean, no genuinely valuable interrogation of reality can take place, and the result will be a literary virtuality built as exclusively from the author's expressed political philosophy as that author can manage. This is best understood, an excellent teacher of mine said, by asking ourselves whether or not a fascist can write a good novel.

I took this idea of Forster's immediately to heart, upon first discovering it. I likewise took to heart his idea that authors fully or even predominately in control of their characters just aren't doing their job. Indeed, the two are really the same: A fascist can't write a good novel because writing a good novel, in the end, is about relinquishing control of the text.

In Forster's sense of things, I have always tried very hard to not be a "political" novelist. I do not come to the page as a propagandist for my own beliefs. This has been made rather more easy for me, I suspect, by the fact that I am, as far as I can tell, more or less a centrist, equally repelled by either extreme of the political spectrum. Indeed, I believe that the spectrum forms a full circle, with right and left merging, as they meet at their respective extremes, into luminous batshit evil.

Could be, but my instinct rises up against this point. How is a "genuine interrogation of reality" any more reliable from a centrist, so-called non-ideological point of view than from something considered ideological? To be non-ideological is merely to conform to the dominant -ism of the day, is it not? But most fiction writers I know agree with the sentiment in Gibson's post, or at least it's the experience they have in writing fiction. None pursue agendas. They pursue stories. And they're never sure where the story will take them in the end, which is the same experience most readers seek.

And finally this from Gibson's blog from Oct. 21. I love the language here:

If I were to put together a truly essential thank-you list for the people who most made it possible for me to write my first six novels, I'd certainly owe as much to Ronald Reagan as to Bill Gates or Lou Reed. Reagan's presidency put the grit in my dystopia. His presidency was the fresh kitty litter I spread for utterly crucial traction on the icey driveway of uncharted futurity. His smile was the nightmare in my back pocket.

Thursday: Kelowna as mini-Vancouver

Today's bLINKit: For the Courier, I describe how Kelowna has become a bit like Vancouver, and not in very good ways.

I can't make it, but I've been told about the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network hosting a live forum Friday in Vancouver, to be televised nationally, about treaties and the hubbub around them. It's at the Museum of Anthropology at UBC at 4:30 p.m. I don't know about getting a seat there at this late stage or if they're reserved or not. Good topic though.

Low Level Rebel explains why transit doesn't quite work in this city.

WMD: And, for the writing theme for today, JaqPike passed this quote on to me from graphic novel writer Alan Moore, regarding the idea for one of his stories:

What I want to show is a world which, having lived through the terrors of the Fifties through the early Nineties with overhanging terror of a nuclear Armageddon that seemed inevitable at the time, has found itself faced with the equally inconceivable and terrifying notion that there might not be an apocalypse. That mankind might actually have a future, and might thus be faced with the terrifying prospect of having to deal with it rather than allowing himself the indulgence of getting rid of that responsibility with a convenient mushroom cloud or nine hundred.

Blogs I'm relieved to see running again: Anishina Boy is back blogging again, after a long absence, and he's in Vancouver on business and liking the place much indeed. Compared to Winnipeg, I guess.

Wednesday catchup: Here come the commuters

Today's bLINKit: The Tyee has run a series of good articles on the invasion of the daily commuter papers to Vancouver.

You can bet journalists are talking about this development. The upshot is that in the short-term, it could shake up a moribund local market, maybe create a few new jobs and pry loose some money for editorial from the status quo publications. No one believes the three new freebie dailies will all survive, but from the point of view of working scribblers it feels strangely good to have new players in the area. One of them is aggressively headhunting local journalists and may even hire a few. That they are headhunting reporters and editors in Vancouver is absolutely unheard of in this town, where journalists are accustomed to being supplicants when it comes to finding jobs.

The first one out the gate, Metro, is less than impressive visually, and the writing is ordinary, and the news nothing you can't get elsewhere, but I caught myself reading it today, and I can imagine people picking it up on SkyTrain and using it to pass the time, which attests to the paper's successful business model. It's cheaper than plunking down 75 cents for the Province if you want to find out quickly what Beyonce wore to the awards, or which faction blew up which neighbourhood in Baghdad.

And of course, the new papers are chasing the youth market. Michael Kissinger of the Courier suggests the creation of Beige, a freebie commuter for the ignored 34 to 49 year old set:

Aimed at the increasingly chubby and disillusioned 34 to 49-year-old demographic, Beige would come out whenever its publishers damn well feel like it and be distributed to people in their cars, in line to purchase some sort of insurance or while standing outside of restaurants smoking cigarettes in quiet shame. Stories would be longwinded, eventually drifting off into a litany of complaints, ranging from swollen joints and annoying in-laws, to how lame the last R.E.M. album was. There will be added attention in the fashion pages to chinos; comfortable footwear that doesn't look like track shoes or wrestling boots; the startling rise of the anti-pleat movement; T-shirts: to tuck or not to tuck; What's not to Like About Sandals and Socks?; loafers, and how difficult it is to find a decent pair of slacks that doesn't bunch up in the crotch when you sit down.

Elsewhere, Brian Fawcett has run a good piece on how to reform the NHL. It's nothing I haven't heard elsewhere, but I wish it had been said more prominently in the debate leading up to the shutdown of the season. Fawcett notes:

Several things need to happen to bring back the serious fans once the League and the players have negotiated their way out of the corner they’re in. At least a half dozen teams need to disappear, the ice surfaces need to be enlarged, and the not-so-radical rule changes noted above all need to be made. And whatever fiscal deal the owners and players eventually work out won’t work unless it acknowledges that fans need to be able to afford to attend the games without needing to sell their kids into slavery. Right now, hockey is a working class sport that only wealthy people can afford to watch live.

Blogs more poetic than my blog: Wednesday posts on Blinkit are supposed to be about writing, so in lieu of a bLINKit or WMD on the topic, here's a blog all about poetry. I'm entirely oriented toward prose in both reading and writing, with the occasional exception made for pre-20th century work or work by poet friends when it comes to reading, so blogs about poetry are not high on my list. But Silliman's Blog, recommended by blogger Caterina Fake, is nicely written, far more articulate than most blogs, and in prose, too. In his most recent posting, Ron Silliman writes about the experience of being under surveillance by intelligence agencies because of his poliitcal work (anti-war, prison reform) in the 1960s and 1970s:

Barrett and I began to hear old phone conversations when we picked up our phone. In those days, you only had one line hardwired into the wall, without any fancy answering machines, let alone recording services available. Sometimes these were conversations one or the other of us had had days before. This was, we presumed, what was known in the intelligence trade as an “open tail.” Somebody wanted us know that we were being watched, just to see what we would do. Yet we were never questioned about our activities in the slightest, tho we reminded each other that should the FBI ever come to the door, we should step outside and close the door behind us, so that they couldn’t come in and claim they were invited. Every activist in the 1960s & ‘70s knew that.

Good advice for 2005 if you live in the U.S. Or elsewhere.

Writing Wednesday: The wages of honesty

WMD: I made $10 at Starbucks. I was waiting for a prescription at the drug store and so went next door to the Starbucks for a quick coffee. I bought one, and as I lifted my cup from the counter felt something papery slide under my shoe. I looked down and saw I was standing on a thin, folded wad of bills, mostly 20s. I picked it up, opened my own wallet and wondered if my money had fallen out when I paid for my coffee. And I wanted it to be my money. But since I had gone to the ATM earlier today, I knew how much cash I had on hand and I wasn't missing any. I looked around for a moment and then approached the women behind the counter and said I'd found someone's money. She immediately realized it belonged to a previous customer who was already heading down the block, took the money and ran out the store to find him. When I went outside, he came running back, thanked me, and despite my protests shoved $10 at me and told me to buy more coffee. (Even at Starbucks, that's about a week or two ration for me.) Moral of the story: it felt good, reward or not, as if somehow civil society had been upheld from impending barbarity.

But I flashed back to three years ago in Europe when I was in line at a McDonald's and pretty much the same thing happened, except this time I stepped on a reasonably priced Euro note. I had no idea whose it was, was confident it was not mine, and so in a quest for previously mentioned upholding of civil society vs. barbarism I told the unhelpful woman behind the food counter (most customer service people in Europe are unhelpful, I hear) about it. She shoved the money at the guy behind me. He happened to be a drunk American (or maybe Canadian) mesomorph, steroidal lout who looked stupidly at the cash, as if there was some catch to it, like admitting he actually liked the French before he was allowed to accept it. It was definitely not his. The real owner was no doubt long gone. He took it anyway, and I did mention he was a mesomorph, steroidal lout. Moral of that story: I should have kept it or given it to some wandering nuns.

Before I forget, congratulations to JaqPike for passing the first hurdle in his quest to become what we now call an educator. He's got a few more steps, but he's getting there one by one.

Today's bLINKit: Lots has been said about Hunter S. Thompson. I liked Christopher Hitchens' musings in Slate.

Sunday thoughts: readings are dull

WMD: I went to another book reading Friday night, partly to do some research for a column. Very nice bookstore, nice people organizing it, and the writer was bright, personable and articulate. Those attending were nice, too, mostly older women, and they were uninterested in discussing anything about the book except superficial questions about why this character or that character, why the setting, how you do you get up and write every day and general gushing about how the writer is the next X and my, good luck to you, sir. Nice for the writer to hear, certainly, dull as sitting in the doctor's office waiting room for anyone else. It's not exactly what I would call critical engagement, especially when you have the writer there to discuss his work. In fairness, the book was not deep literature, but even airport fiction or thrillers can be a springboard for good talk. The writer, however, impressed me. Wrote his book in five months without taking time off from his dayjob. And he's got a family, too. OK, that's me gushing.

Writing Wednesday: Top 10 errors

Today's bLINKit: Nothing on this list is original or startling, and sure, admonitions about good writing and the idea of good writing are inherently political, but it's worth repeating the basics of good writing (political or not) by noting the most common errors of bad writing.

Blogs with more alternate history than my blog: A writer (of SF, I think) who calls himself "that rare creature, a liberal Texan," keeps a blog describing dates in alternate history. I'm still trying to figure out what it's about (it looks like background material for a book or fantasy world) but it is interesting. A recent posting:

in 1971, Soviet American forces fighting in North Chile spread the conflict into The People’s Republic of Bolivia when they found that South Chilean guerrillos were hiding in that country to evade American troops. Comrade President Gus Hall approved the beginning of strikes into Bolivia to eliminate the Guerrillos, in spite of the illegality of the action. It drew widespread condemnation, even from many communist allies, and contributed to Comrade Hall’s drop in popularity.

Thursday 2: More on style guide

WMD: RP asked if my forbidden list of words and phrases was based on CP's list. To answer, CP Style has no forbidden words and phrases list that I know of, although I note in editions later than mine it includes a section on avoiding sexist usage. CP advises on spelling, abbreviations, when to capitalize nouns, how to render numbers, addresses, weights and measures, how to write out time, when and when not to use hyphens and a whole lot more along that line. It's more a Miss Manners style guide for formal company than a Strunk and White guide to better writing. The forbidden list is my attempted defence against our stories sounding like a staff report to city council on social housing policy.