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The time is now for some terrible poetry

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I’ll take the lead here and showcase various terrible poems that I’ve written since 1994. Expect some lazy tropes, teenage angst, lots of crossed analogies that don’t really add anything substantive to the narrative. I will do my best to publish them as is without any major edits. I will correct spelling if I stumble across anything really egregious. Prepare yourselves for a round of terrible poetry.

Actually now that I think of it, this could be a monthly serial of all of my needless poetry. I’m dead certain I have enough for a few lengthy entries here. I should place a caveat here, that in my hey day, my hand writing was minuscule and sort of atrocious. So I can not guarantee that the original thought or intent will remain intact. Might have to guess at a word or two, seeing as I’m now twenty five almost twenty six years older than when I wrote these “poems“.

Buckle up folks, an auteur I am not:

1.) Soulless Man Circa 1994

Standing all alone, sits a man on his throne, gazing at a town he once called his home. Never to return to his village of peace, destined to roam, for fear this soul shall cease. Once he was a boy of paradise and joy. Gone, stripped of his city of love. He is led to destroy on the wings of a dove. Cold windy nights spent with heavenly lights, teary eyed fights with only blood in sight, stood he, all alone. Frozen tears are his throne, his old home, now ashes and blackened stone. Shadows cast down, pale whispers, no sound. An empty man, blood of a boy, stains of a memory torn, a life destroyed. Cold and barren is this man, as he stands all alone.

Oh boy, that is some dog shit right there. This is tough. May not have been as good an idea for a writing prompt as I originally thought. This is well before Game of Thrones, or anything of that sort coming into my life, so I guess I was trying to be brooding and moody? On to the next few then, with haste my friends…

2.) None too clear Circa 1994

I looked into the mirror the other day and what I saw shocked me. My reflection pointed to me and said ” You’re skinny, weak and would be better off dead.” I didn’t take too well to my reflection so I pulled the mirror down off the wall, broke off all of the pieces of frame, and shattered the silver backed glass. The next morning I awoke to find the old mirror back upon the wall as if nothing had happened. I stood before my mirror, and starred deeply into my reflection. Our eyes met, but I noticed something strange, for the world was turned around and it wasn’t me but my reflection starring back.

I get what I was going for here, like the old switch aroo, between the real me and the reflection all of a sudden passing through into this plane, and me drawn into the other, but it’s kind of hazy, and not well executed. I have a feeling with the more of these I read, the more certain it will become that I was depressed, or at least morose as an early teen. let’s dig in for another one or two, and then we’ll call it a day for the first of what could be many trips into terrible poetry territory. And no, I am not posting all of them, same are just too awful to share. So think about how bad these are and imagine something either too bizarre, saccharine or melancholy even for me to post twenty fives years later.

3.) Shattered Circa 1994

Shatter the mirrors that look back with distaste. Close up their shutters, so they no longer expose our inner horrors. Nail shut the eyes that glisten, wet and painful. Feel these fragments scatter, lost to the wind, mixed with the clouds, and buried by the dust. See your faces gazing back, held between the mirrors cracks, the glass will shower your soul with tiny pieces of memory, like sand kicked up by a storm. I’m not ready for you to expose me as only a shattered mirror could.

Looks as though I had a thing going regarding mirrors at this point. May’haps it was due to being six feet tall and something like one hundred and ten pounds. Lank greasy hair, and sore limbs. Could be an educated guess, but I’d have to see some photos from that time to really know. Oh, we had also moved that year from a medium town to a small village in rural Ontario, and I’d lost all of my friends to distance and lack of mobility between destinations.

Good God there are a whole lot more terrible poems waiting in my archives, so I can always revisit this again another time sooner or later. I don’t have a schedule for writing topics, I’m just trying to keep things fresh and interesting, and to stay off Facebook® more and more.

2019 Sculptures : And a shout out to Olympus built cameras

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All ten bust sculpts from 2019. Some are done in Super Sculpey and some are done in Chavant NSP Hard, and Monster Clay Hard.

I finally got around to putting together a single page spread of last years sculptures, with all of them together, the good, the bad, and the indifferent. I completed less than half as many as I did the year before, but I chose to work the bulk of the years items in super sculpey, so that they could be baked and painted, which is different than the Chavant stuff, which are used to cast and mould items for larger production. I have yet to step into that ring, mainly because it is expensive, smelly and requires knowledge I do not yet have a firm grasp of. Plus I’m not a house hold name, and I’d hate to end up sitting on twenty five pieces of my own artwork for no reason other than hubris, thinking others would like my stuff even half as much as I do in some instances. I chose to add in the crappy sculpts too, because, Hey!, a good portion of creating is putting out garbage until you refine your skills enough to do something you are somewhat proud of. I haven’t put any new clay down yet so far this year, I do have an armature bulked out ready to go, but I’ve been focused on writing, reading, and drinking water until I can’t stand myself any more. I have a couple of ideas for what I will do, I’m just not ready to commit to it yet. I tend to see so many great things over on the Shiflett brothers sculpting forum on facebook, and on instagram, and I squirrel those images and ideas away until I can really get my head around it.

Also I wanted to give a shout out to my Olympus SP-500UZ which I bought in 2006, which is still going strong to this day. I came to turn it on today to get my collage done and it was dark, but with some new batteries, she is up and running and just a great as the day I got it. Although if I’d have had the money, a Pentax film camera would have been my go to, but just out of College/University I chose a point and shoot that had several more options and capabilities. This is pre digital SLR being ubiquitous and cost effective for noobs to own. Although the camera on my phone is really good for this sort of thing too.

One goal I am going to accomplish this year, if to do a full figure again. I started out doing whole people, and then couldn’t do faces and hands and feet. Spent some time with the Ninja Turtles as my muse and could do a passable three fingered hand, and two toed feet and then went to busts to really get to know a face; the eyes, ears, mouths and noses. I have yet to master any other those elements, but I can at least make things look human, or depict the essence of my subject. I think i got fairly close in 2018 with my Thanos, Yondu & Thor busts. Also a big reason I’ve calmed down on my output is that I have limited space in my office/studio for storage, and don’t want to have my rough work scattered throughout the house, or in the basement. We have Nerf® gun fights, and rough house down stairs and I’d get mad if my stuff got injured in the course of us having a family fun Nerf® gun fight. An errant bullet deforming an oil based clay sculpture would not be my favourite thing.

Oh, and another thing, the reason I did 60% of last years sculpting work in Sculpey was because I had ideas about painting them all, and taking the best paint job / best sculpted item to the Markham Fair. You see they don’t really have a sculpting category, but you can enter painted ceramics. Sculpey is ceramic like, but not ceramic. So I can enter to get people to see my work, but it doesn’t qualify for judging or prizing. Just eyeballs, and a chance to show friends and family my work out in public. Which is fun, so I have that going for me.

Writing the second draft of my short children’s story

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Here’s a wee bit of a conundrum for you. As I sit here writing the second draft of my short children’s story, I’m struck by who my audience is. Do I write it so that two to six year olds enjoy the story, the written portion, or do I make it so that a parent would enjoy reading it? I know that in most cases, the children will look at the pictures more so than the written text, so it seems I’d be more likely to read books to my kids that I enjoy reading myself. Not that it would need to rhyme or have some sort of gimmick to it, but just that the characters seems to be multi dimensional, or show signs of using their imaginations in a positive manner. I should really come back and map out what I want to say here. Perhaps some point form notes will help.

• Multi dimensional characters  • Fun for adults to read, but with subject matter that means something to both parents and children  • Showing that girls can have mechanical engineering leanings, and like working with their hands, and doing all sorts of tasks • Showing empathy for animals  • Being a leader, but also a functional part of a team  • Using their imaginations, unlimited by gender stereotypes • Bright colourful drawings and illustrations (more of a personal preference, again, and a high bar for my later steps of actually drawing the spreads)

I’d love to see that my own kids like the story, and the characters, but I’d also love to see if it was something that other parents could get behind. Also, if I put multiple adventures in one story, is there a call to put out more, where only one adventure happens per story? It’s for kids, so maybe that’ll never be a real concern.

Who knows how many drafts I’ll end up doing. I keep vacillating between deepening the story and expanding it, and cutting out extraneous portions, as at this point, the focus would likely be on the drawings and the written stuff is just there to augment that. Questions, questions. So many questions I need to keep asking and answering at each bench mark throughout this process. Although when I get it all done once, I can use what I’ve learned from it to adjust how I would possible do another at a later date.

Plus I came up with this idea when I only had the one child, now that I have two, I will need to work in a third character, or else things could get heated for me here at home! Ha. It sort of surprises me just how long I’ve been thinking of doing this one specific project. I remember I was pruning some hedges out back, while my eldest and our dog were playing in the yard with me, and I thought about all the silly things I could imagine her imagining them both doing. The Zoom Zoom Zoom song had just been taught to us at her play group, so walking on the moon was a big thing that couple of weeks. Funny how those little moments can bring something about.

Hopefully I don’t talk this up too much, and then when it drops be a total misfire/flop. But realistically if my kids like it, who TF cares what anyone else thinks of it.

I was legit giddy when I finally figured it out.

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Many, many moons ago, when my lovely wife and I got engaged, she bought me a lovely Gibson guitar and a sweet Marshall amp. We didn’t have children then, and our fur baby came along about a year after we got married, so for the longest time I could crank up my amp and play for ninety minutes or more in a day without a care. But since we’ve had children I had to curtail my musical endeavours in favour of nap time, for the sanity of everyone in our household. But, my Marshall amp is awesome, as i said before, and it came equipped with a emulated head phone jack. But i could never get it to just output through the jack alone, and not blast through the speaker aswell. I figured, for a very long time, that i just had the incorrect jack conversion piece that fits my 3.5 mm headphones. But no, i had all of the right pieces, i had just failed, miserably i might add, to work out the correct placement of the dials to be able to rock out with just the headphones. Until now.

Let me tell you something, i haven’t danced a happy jig in quite some time. I’m not a miserable sod, but i don’t get giddy very often. But tonight. Oh, tonight I danced a two step, clapped my hands and was beaming, just BEAMING from ear to ear. I can play again, without fear of disturbing my family or neighbours. Oh such joy, to bring music back into my life again! I have to restrain myself from staying up tonight and playing until my finger tips go numb, hurt or bleed.

So many songs I’ve forgotten over the last five years. Usually I would wait until my wife and daughters had sometime away to be able to dust off the green machine and play along to Royal Blood or Wolfmother, or even some Soundgarden. That’s not to say that I’ve never played in front of them. I had taken to playing my acoustic upstairs once in a blue moon. But I’m rusty af, and I learned some Joe Satriani material before I ever learned any chords. So my strumming is weak, and so are my fingers on those ultra thick acoustic strings. Gimme those bendy 9’s. Bit of a character flaw of mine. Trying to run before I can crawl.

But again I can know the joy of learning new material and keeping some dexterity in my fingers and hands. Oh happy day. Music really is a wonderful thing.

We sing a lot here at the house, well at least I do. I’m no stranger to a mid day dance party with my girls while we do chores, or to do away with some mid day blues. Especially since we’ve had snow since November first this year.

So very glad to have that option back. Feel stupid it took me so long to settle in and sort that out.

Taking it to the mat : Weekend Edition

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I really just wanted to having something in the bag incase I didn’t feel like writing anything at some point next week. Good to use your time productively and give yourself some slack in the future if you need a quiet day to relax a little bit.

I made mention of this before, yesterday even. Not in my quick note about the Iranian tragedy but the little written piece before that.

Last night, on opening night no less, I went to go see “Underwater” at an eight pm showing in what would be considered to be a sparsely populated theater. I know it’s January and Hollywood tends to drop off its pinched turds into theaters at this time. But I tell you what, Underwater was a fairly well crafted film. Acting was decent, script was not too mealy mouthed or jargon heavy, and it was paced quick as hell too. Effects were practical and you had a real sense of tangible on screen utility. Kristen Stewart did a commendable job as reluctant heroin who was not an over powered Mary sue, and she is an engineer so things she does are in her handy woman wheel house. Plus what she suffers through has real time effects on her, and are portrayed as such.

But what really got me going about this $65 million dollar, practical effects, team driven sci fi flick was how good of a proof of concept it is for a Gears of War film. Namely a first in the series, that sets up the cog wars, Serra, the Gears and those huge bulky power suits. If the first film is a character driven war time story of a team of six very tight fighting fire team, that shows their origins, how they work together, their banter and dynamics against a backdrop of man vs man war, only to end with the last five to ten minutes including Emergence Day, which could lay out a great series of sequels but keep the budget to $65/70 million so it didn’t have to make three quarters of a billion to be profitable, I’d call that a huge win.

If the horde show up as prosthetics, and guys in suits, under smoke and bad lighting you could really get that budget to stretch and focus on the team and why were cared about the game franchise to begin with.

If the group dynamics, claustrophobic scenery and story of human suffering in war time coalesce, the first time out in a GoW story doesn’t have to have millions of effects on screen at once.

I liken it to Alien and Aliens. Do the small intimate story up front, let it sell itself, then pump the budget to include a sense of scale to a whole planet at war with alien/ancient underground foes.

That’s just my two sense, but I really feel you could do so much with it if you keep it small, focused and driven by the interplay among the title characters who were soldiers fighting other soldiers to begin with, before the world fell because of a massive Hammer of Dawn strike that didn’t really work, except to kill a few billion innocent bystanders.

But beyond that, I’d by Underwater on bluray, and will watch any specials features with pure glee! It was eerie, and suspenseful, and scary and exhausting and fun all at the same time.

Go see it. It’s not a remake, nor a sequel, nor an adaptation of a pre existing property. Although it does borrow mightily from The Abyss, Aliens, Cloverfield (the original good one). Kristen Stewart did a real good job, she was ultimately believable in her role. That’s about as much as anyone could ask for.

When world news finds its way into your tiny rural town: Iranian tragedy

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Being over in rural Ontario you tend to feel as though the happenings of the outside world don’t register as strongly as they should. Well today it has come to light that one family among those 176 lost, and of the 63 Canadians travelled in similar circles as my family. A friendly, quiet family staring back at us from the pages of an Obituary. A friendly and quiet family you recognize from your daughter’s pre school play group. We weren’t close, or even acquaintances, just on friendly and knowing nods in greeting as we piled our raucous and unruly young children into and out of the play room, wrangling our kids for snack or at circle time, and keeping our wee ones excited while chasing oddly shaped rubber balls on the field. We were all Canadians, doing our best to teach our kids, but now only some of us remain. A real tragedy. Brings the news, unrelenting as it is, right to your doorstep and demands you pay attention, even if you think its world news and not your concern. Humanity finds a way. Nothing I can say to their extended family would bring them back, or fill the void left by their untimely departure. May cooler heads prevail, and their contributions to humanity never forgotten.

End of the week, and still rolling.

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Man, this shit is hard. It’s har-rd. But you gotta do it, you have to keep up, and stay on it, otherwise everything will just settle back into the way it was. If you weren’t happy with the way it was, then you’ll have to find a way, some way, any way to push on through and keep up with all of those tiny little incremental changes you’ve been trying to make. To get better, to be happier or more satisfied, or to obtain a goal or achievement takes work. Gods honest work. Put in the cumulative hours and be the change you want to see. Reach for a glass of water, walk a flight of stairs, turn on your favourite song and groove out to it for three minutes, thirty seconds. You have to consciously make those choices, deliberately. You ain’t a hero cause you did that once, you have to keep coming to the fork in the road and make that tough choice again, and again.

Sucks when you can’t pawn off your bad decisions on someone or something else. Got to, have to, must make those decisions daily in order to build up the muscle memory and create a lifestyle change. You don’t wish, you don’t want, you wouldn’t like, YOU DO. Just like Yoda says, you do or you do not, there is no “try”. And not in the sense that if you can’t do it perfectly from the get go then don’t bother. But do it, don’t try, sometimes, as a forgettable afterthought. Do it. Every day. Make that effort. Build it into your schedule. And get it done.

As a side note, I’m looking to go see Underwater tonight, and I think it’s going to be a fun sci-fi mix of the abyss and Aliens. It is January so I don’t have incredibly high Hope’s, but I’ve heard decent things about it.

Getting back into the swing of things

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That didn’t take long now did it, ha. A few new projects turned up in my inbox and after my daughters play group, and a stint out shopping for groceries, I’m back into the thick of it. Just the kick in the pants I needed to not feel so… well, lost – ish? More like, left to languish in a soft spot between projects and work responsibilities. Floating around with no definite need to really go and get anything concrete done, seems to fit the bill. Although now that I have some deadlines listed in my day planner, I feel a bit more like myself. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a champ when it comes to vegging out, and “doing nothing“. I can fill up the better part of a day with “doing nothing“. No I can’t help you out, or go do something, I’m in the middle of doing nothing. That’s it, that’s the thing. Or now you’d say, that’s it, that’s the tweet. #DoingNothing . But to have a steady work flow that isn’t too manic, or lax is my sweet spot. I love to have work on the go, but with time in between to sculpt, or build model kits, or noodle about on my guitar. Hell, this year I’ll even add starting and completing a children’s book for/about my daughters.

I think my days of working through one hundred plus items per week, for years and years have come to an end. The physical toll, on my wrists, my eye sight, and my general mental state means I’m not exactly itching to go back to that. Working freelance, while it does entail some last minute ditch attempts to get stuff out with insane time lines, usually leaves me with more than enough time to plan out and execute projects with a buffer of time so I’m not run down to the bone.

Oh yeah, I did manage to get to that crazy ass junk drawer yesterday, so I’m having a very productive 2020, for small daily wins. Plus I’m keeping the house just a tiny bit cleaner, and realizing where all of those weird odds and ends have gotten to. It isn’t much, but it’s honest work, as the meme states. Do you find yourself accomplishing the tasks you set out for yourselves, or have you settled back into the usual all ready? For what it’s worth, I’m still drinking plain water every day, I’m not crazy and haven’t gone to only water, but I’ve added it into the mix of beverages I’ll regularly reach for throughout the day, and I think that moderation is key. Same with making a conscience effort to make small, or incremental life style alterations to my day to day habits. Adjust a portion size here, reach for a glass of water there, take some stairs, walk to a store once more than I usually would. Nothing major, and not making myself crazy about it either way. Having to pee several more times per day is not much fun, but clearer skin, fewer headaches, and more regularity are worth a couple added pit stops over the course of my whole day.

-M

Keeping on with the new normal.

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What a surprise it is, that we are eight whole days into the new year and I am all ready flagging on my goal of trying to do a little bit of something every day. Doesn’t help that my eldest is at home sick with Strep throat, but that’s really just a minor setback, and not much of an excuse. Coming off the winter break (a.k.a. the Christmas holidays) I’m just having a difficult time settling back into my usual work schedule, of 3 hours, mid day of day job activities, surrounded by parenting duties, school pick ups, play group attendance and chores around the house. Really, the fact is I’m just taking longer than usual to adjust to real life after fourteen days of having everyone home and no work on the books, save for one small item that took less than an hour to accomplish. I do think that as my regularly scheduled life and responsibilities start to make themselves known, I’ll be able to settle into my fully functioning schedule. I think the best part of having multiple corporate clients with very different schedules, means I can keep somewhat busy all year, rather than having 2-3 months of seriously quiet downtime.

On a much happier note, we got my eldest looked after and she is on the mend. Her fever of 104 degrees has finally broken and the antibiotics are doing what they should. She’ll be well enough to go back to school tomorrow. That will have made for a very short first week back for the new year. Given the grade she’s in, that’s not a major setback, as there are no exams or testing done at her age. I think she’ll be tickled pink to be back among her friends, and to not feel so rotten. She really looked rough yesterday, and the constant waking in the night to cry and need a drink, and wander from her bed to the bathroom, made her worse for wear.

In other news, I’m still drinking more water, which is more of a benefit than any kind of a resolution, since I don’t consume alcohol much, if at all, beyond a couple over the holidays. But I do like soda, carbonated drinks, and fruit juices. But you can only get a head ache at 2:00pm every day for so long before you really do have to adjust your habits. Although since I know my eyes are getting worse with age, I did assume some of that was due to eye strain, but it’s more likely due to my not imbibing actual proper just plain water.

Something else that I have actually been doing, was going through one or two drawers per day, and tidying up the house. I tackled a couple of kitchen drawers the other day, and sent all of the extra napkins, and plastic utensils to work with my wife, so her cafeteria could put that stuff to use, instead of tipping it all directly into the trash. Sorted out my baking drawer too. Found all of the random sprinkle shakers and put them together. I now (and don’t know for how long I will remember it) have a decent count of all of our cupcake wrappers. Next big job is the junk drawer that is full of electrical parts, batteries, rubber bands, and all sorts of manuals and bits and pieces. No rush, as long as I get to it sometime this year, I’ll be happy with myself.

That’s the goal though isn’t it, small manageable tasks that give you a small win every day. Try to do it all at once and it becomes overwhelming and daunting and you’re more prone to giving up or giving in to the mess. Maybe I do need to get more corporate clients, so I can afford to build a new row of lower cupboards with a nice countertop along the far wall of our dining room to add much needed storage space on our main floor. We have a very nice, yet not terribly functional piece of antique wood furniture there, a side board, or hutch, or banquette type thing. It’s nearly one hundred years old, and has been in my wife’s extended family for a while. We have been stewards of this heirloom furniture, but our kids are remorseless with them. Will need to refinish them, before they go to someone else for safe keeping.

I dabble in wood working, and I desperately want to build us a new dining room table, one that fits the space better than the current one. Although I think for the love of all that is good and holy, I will start by building two desks for use at the cottage to bone up on my skills, before making something as expensive as a hard wood dining table. I’m going to attempt a char at some point too. Probably something more utilitarian that I can keep in my workspace, rather than in the house.

Anyway, stay golden pony boy.

-M

My eldest is home sick with a fever…

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Yesterday was the blessed first day back to school of the new year and my poor little Lemon came home sick at the end of the day with a bit of a fever. She’s now curled up asleep after spending the night sweating through her sheets at nearly 104 degrees! So far today she has spent most of her time coiled in blankets, watching cartoons, and drinking watered down juice to keep her spirits up. She’s been a really good sport about it all. Glad it hasn’t brought any vomiting, or upset tummy along with it, at least at this point, it has not. My youngest is trying her damnedest to not have a nap, but I actually had some of my day job responsibilities to attend to today, if only for a couple of hours. The best part of working from home, is that these sorts of occurrences don’t throw a huge wrench into my day to day plans. I’m pretty fluid with how I can and do conduct my day to day business. If it was real bad, I’d just do the bulk of my work at night after the girls had gone to bed. Provided they stayed there, and didn’t require an emergency trip to the ER, or walk in clinic. Then all best are off, and I’d be figuring things out on the fly. Both a plus and a minus to working for yourself.

Oh yeah, I checked in on my Word Doc for my short story, looks like it’s all there. I definitely want to make it a bit longer. Not sure if that means making each adventure it’s own self contained “thing”, or making each one a short 2 page spread in one singular book. I guess because I want to illustrate it myself, I’ll make it one book. No reason to have five unfinished projects on the back burner, just mocking me, knowing that they are there.

Oh yeah, go donate to Australia, that shits on fire yo. Got Damn. Greta Thunberg and all the rest of those climate researchers and activists have been warning us, over and over, and it seems as those we don’t really heed the call to action. Plant more trees, go meatless once a week, use reusable bags when shopping, recycle, walk or bike more, turn shit off that doesn’t need to be on. Do what you can.

M