From "Homemade"

Teresa liked the people that asked for books on origami. She imagined they had very neat homes, with closets full of transparent boxes and spare rooms with clean sheets.

From "Homemade"

Teresa had been working at Bookends for three months and had finally entered that comfortably-sized tunnel of patterns and rhythms that defines a nine-to-five position. She had a combination lock for her cubby, a thermal travel mug that she washed out every night, and a plastic container for the pink runcible spoon that her colleagues insisted on calling a ‘spork’. She had a tote bag reserved exclusively for “work stuff” and the occasional string of green lights with her commute. Although exhilaration wasn’t something she could expect from this job- contentment might be.

From "White Bowls in White Cupboards"

Sonia had honey blond highlights painted on by a woman named Melissa. Melissa had pink nails and a pink baby boy, and she lived in a house with a sun porch. One day, Melissa brought a big pitcher of homemade sun tea into the salon, and Sonia became fixated by this gesture; an effort she found at once charming and irksome. Melissa handed her a red plastic cup, the ubiquitous type you see in the hands of men at outdoor parties, and Sonia thanked her, and assured her it was good. That word- that jug of sun tea, it got her thinking about the expression, “out-of-doors”, and did this term exist when the world was full of tent flaps?

From "White Bowls in White Cupboards"

She’d been working in the drug store in the lobby of a hotel where he had a sales conference.When you married a person, you inherited a dowry of their good and bad habits, of mistakes and acquaintances and well-worn behaviors that required courage, and patience, and a bit of compromise. Theo, for example, had a thing for the color purple, but he didn’t look good in it because he had blond hair. He had oddly formed kneecaps, and a noisome habit of cracking his knuckles during television commercials. But he was kind, and predictable- he liked malted milkshakes and he still looked forward to the weekends as if something different might happen. When it didn’t, this made him feel content instead of anxious, and he seemed pretty comfortable with the snapshot forecast of his future life. 2006, 2007- the cozy years unfolding in the canopy of a fixed mortgage. 6.3. With points.

It's been a lovely while.

Cut hair on the cold floor. Outer leaves of lettuce. Scraps of paper from a cut-out, paper heart. From time to time, I will be posting parts of my short stories that got the good snip-snip.
Welcome to the home of the words I don't use in the stories that I write.

Let the Right One In: The Most intelligent Holocaust Film Ever?

Perhaps I'm looking into this film too deeply, digging through the frozen snow for the blood, if you will, but I think this is the most brilliant Holocaust film I've ever seen.

Squirming a bit? A wee bit surprised? Trust me, I feel you...but I mean what I said. To me, this film is using vampirism as a brilliant vehicle for the diabolic violence of the Second World War.

Let's start with the lead actors. On one hand, we have Oskar, blonder than blond, with translucent skin, a lonely lost boy in a country full of untouched and unbroken (pure white) snow. On the other side of the screen, we have Eli. Eli, people. Work with me here.... it's not like she's named Lina, Signe or Ikea, for that matter. Eli has dark, slightly curly hair, pronounced eyebrows and a troubling beauty far beyond her years. She can't stand the light and is portrayed as a blood-letter, a veritable vampire who sucks the life and energy from the white men and women around her.

If you're still with me, I'll continue. Enter the story of a forbidden love. Eli continually warns Oscar that "things can't continue like this". She can only travel by night and she spends her days hidden under five layers of blankets in a bathroom in a semi-deserted apartment. Certainly, we can see the comparison with the vampire lifestyle- the intolerance of light, safe passage in the evening, the endless need for blood...but what of the interesting addition to the vampire genre, the idea that vampires can only be accepted into someone's house if they are invited?

Here, I see a person seeking safe passage- an ostracized denizen looking for a haven. Eli's guardian warns her about seeing Oskar, and Oskar's absentee mother, when home, seems ill-at-ease with his newfound fasination in the morose next-door neighbor. Things are looking dangerous for the chosen son.

Theirs is one untimely and unlucky love. Eli is a pariah with a yellow star upon her adolescent chest, and Oskar steps one footprint closer to his grave ever time he meets up with her in the aluminum playground outside of their apartments. (Which are made out of brick, by the way- and you don't see brick buildings every day in Sweden unless we're dealing with chimneys). When it becomes too dangerous for the two to be seen together in public, they opt to communicate through a "wall"- tapping out simplistic messages using morse code.

This is impossible love, big time, but the ice is there to crack. Did I spend too many years with my nose against the uppity bridge of semiotics, or did the Aryan race just meet the "dark side" under the umbrella of the vampire genre?

Andy Wahloo: Le Relookage

Um....this is embarrassing, but Andy? Your new look? Yeah. Not so much. I'll give you your scrumptious cocktails and well-endowed serveuses, but what the heck got in to you? Why did you replace the much-beloved bric-and-brac of your former self with a plastic dance floor? Yes, you read me correctly— a brown plastic dance floor. Is someone having a wedding anytime soon?

The relooking of Andy Wahloo makes no sense to me, at all. From a commercial standpoint, with the addition of the dance floor, they've taken away tables (i.e clients). From a social standpoint, the new layout might be referred to (by minds very uncouth) as a "cock block." The tables are arranged in a horrific horseshoe that means that you are required to stare at an empty dance floor from every vantage point in the bar. Empty dance floors are depressing! Did the owners never go to a high school dance for God's sake? Plus, they are dangerous, and require a lot of courage. And things that require courage require a lot of alcohol-—ah ha! I get it! They installed a plastic dance floor to get people to drink!

Touché, Andy Wahloo. But I still liked you better before.

Photo credit: Gordon Youl on Flickr