Tuesday, August 30, 2005

they just had to fuckin ruin it

so i delivered my previous post, and maybe i shoulda known better, shoulda known how easily spoilable my tenuous sense of goodwill really was, especially before 10am, but after posting i called customer service because i had a list to work my way through. and now i feel strongly enough that i had to go back through patrick's archives to find this letter, which i thought was the best expression of my current feelings:

Dear Cretins,
I have been an NTL customer since 9th July 2001, when I signed up for your 3-in-one deal for cable TV, cable modem, and telephone. During this three-month period I have encountered inadequacy of service which I had not previously considered possible, as well as ignorance and stupidity of monolithic proportions. Please allow me to provide specific details,so that you can either pursue your professional perogative, and seek to rectify these difficulties - or more likely (I suspect) so that you can have some entertaining reading material as you while away the working day smoking B&H and drinking vendor-coffee on the bog in your office:
My initial installation was cancelled without warning, resulting in my spending an entire Saturday sitting on my fat arse waiting for your technician to arrive. When he did not arrive, I spent a further 57 minutes listening to your infuriating hold music, and the even more annoying Scottish robot woman telling me to look at your helpful website....HOW?
I alleviated the boredom by playing with my testicles for a few minutes-an activity at which you are no-doubt both familiar and highly adept.The rescheduled installation then took place some two weeks later,although the technician did forget to bring a number of vital tools -such as a drill-bit, and his cerebrum. Two weeks later, my cable modem had still not arrived. After 15 telephone calls over 4 weeks my modem arrived... six weeks after I had requested it, and begun to pay for it. I estimate your internet server's downtime is roughly 35%... hours between about 6pm -midnight, Mon-Fri, and most of the weekend. I am still waiting for my telephone connection. I have made 9 calls on my mobile to your no-help line, and have been unhelpfully transferred to a variety of disinterested individuals, who are it seems also highly skilled bollock jugglers.
I have been informed that a telephone line is available (and someone will call me back); that no telephone line is available (and someone will call me back); that I will be transferred to someone who knows whether or not a telephone line is available (and then been cut off); that I will be transferred to someone (and then been redirected to an answer machine informing me that your office is closed); that I will be transferred to someone and then been redirected to the irritating Scottish robot woman...and several other variations on this theme.
Doubtless you are no longer reading this letter, as you have at least a thousand other dissatisfied customers to ignore, and also another one of those crucially important testicle-moments to attend to. Frankly I don't care, it's far more satisfying as a customer to voice my frustration's in print than to shout them at your unending hold music. Forgive me,therefore, if I continue.
I thought BT were shit, that they had attained the holy piss-pot of god-awful customer relations, that no-one, anywhere, ever, could be more disinterested, less helpful or more obstructive to delivering service to their customers. That's why I chose NTL, and because, well, there isn't anyone else is there? How surprised I therefore was, when I discovered to my considerable dissatisfaction and disappointment what a uselesss hower of bastards you truly are. You are sputum-filled pieces of distended rectum incompetents of the highest order.
British Telecom - wankers though they are - shine like brilliant beacons of success, in the filthy puss-filled mire of your seemingly limitless inadequacy. Suffice to say that I have now given up on my futile and fool hardy quest to receive any kind of service from you. I suggest that you cease any potential future attempts to extort payment from me for the services which you have so pointedly and catastrophically failed to deliver - any such activity will be greeted initially with hilarity and disbelief quickly be replaced by derision, and even perhaps bemused rage. I enclose two small deposits, selected with great care from my cats litter tray, as an expression of my utter and complete contempt for both you and your pointless company. I sincerely hope that they have not become desiccated during transit - they were satisfyingly moist at the time of posting, and I would feel considerable disappointment if you didn ot experience both their rich aroma and delicate texture. Consider them the very embodiment of my feelings towards NTL, and its worthless employees.
Have a nice day - may it be the last in you miserable short life, you irritatingly incompetent and infuriatingly unhelpful bunch of twats.
John

Complaint Letter of the Year. The British do have a way with words.... A real-life customer complaint letter sent to NTL (to their complaints dept....)

big up patrick, for providing...
walk good.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home

awww...

every now and then the world's inhabitants prove me wrong in my generalised hatred. i have to cut back.
found this entry on postsecret:

"I have made six postcards, all with secrets that I was afraid to tell the one person I tell everything to, my boyfriend. This morning I planned to mail them, but instead I left them on the pillow next to his head while he was sleeping. 10 minutes ago he arrived at my office and asked me to marry him. I said yes."-Canada

maybe it's not all going to hell in a handbasket...
walk good. feel the love.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home

Monday, August 29, 2005

fyah bun homework!

all last week when i got done @ the radio station i had homework to do (until friday night, when we had some important liming to indulge in) so i glad last week is done. i did what i needed to for shakespeare, worked hard @ the station, and did a good job with that teaching application- of course, they then said they loved my proposal but needed to go with an organisation that could provide full-time teachers in the long term, so now i wanna call back and ask what their point was in calling me in the first place (yes, they called and asked me, not vice-versa) and asking me to apply and submit a syllabus, when they knew in advance i was a freelancer, not an organisation. much time spent on the coursework for the application, which i now feel was moot.
anyway, now i have a prepared syllabus if i ever need one, and i'm excited enough about the new season of shakespeare that i'm over not getting that gig. and it was a good week- i contributed music (stevie wonder's superstitious, naturally) for tomorrow's moog* (inventor of the synthesizer) radio segment (tech tuesday @ noon on 88.5fm) and helped with today's segment on the renewed medicinal use of leeches and maggots (which i wish i'd had time to blog about before it aired, for those who might've liked to listen, but you can find it @ http://www.wamu.org/ on the kojo nnamdi show archives) in between my own segments, so i'm pretty work-happy for now anyway. screw school.
this weekend, we limed with glen friday night, partied with kojo+pam+friends saturday night (a real grown-up party for her 50th b'day, so i had much fun and danced my ass off- the closest i've ever come to liking 50cent was when the old people took to the dance floor when in da club came on- felt like he shoulda used footage of that for his video instead- priceless), then last night i saw final dress for the shakespeare's othello, starring the brilliant avery brooks in the title role and he was sooooo goooood (of course, it ran over 3hours with intermission, but i'm sure they'll bring it in just under 3 by opening night).
tonight we hearing glen play @ tryst, which i always thought seemed too trendy for me, so it'll be my first time there. not that i care- i'm going for glen+jazz, and a date with ilana.
alright. must run so i can eat a pastelle before going to hear glen.
walk good.

*if you checking out the moog link, the 'wendy carlos' of "switched on bach" fame (mentioned in his bio) actually recorded that and the bulk of her work as 'walter' and then had a sex change operation, leading to scholarly confusion since most of the music was recorded as 'walter' and 'wendy' doesn't like to be called that anymore. so now she's called: 'uncomfortable-pause-uh-carlos'.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

full endorsement

i'd like to officially endorse jake's airline rebranding concept.
henceforth, the company previously known as "american airlines" will be known as "stank-ass fat ho airlines", with full concept development to follow...
and yes, we will take suggestions.

post-publishing-edit:
and speaking of endorsements, i realise i forgot to give an amp fiddler link when i mentioned him (and band, especially my favourite backup singer ever, stephanie mckay whose album is tight!) as my pick to back stevie wonder. saw amp+co unexpectedly @ the 9:30 months ago, and can't forget that amazing show. check it out.
unfortunately mckay's homepage is denied me, but here it is, in case anybody else can get on it. and amp fiddler's homepage is in process, but you can check tour dates and hear some tunes in the meanwhile, and save the url for later if you're interested...

walk good.

ps: i promise a full post and new fiction once i get through coming up with a draft syllabus for this possible teaching gig and selecting shakespeare scenes for next season, but for the moment, homework comes first.

5 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

6:08 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

6:30 pm  
Blogger sweet trini said...

this past week i've had my first encounters with spam comments on my blog. for the few who read me, just want you to know that only comments i delete are spam, and i'm not deleting comments just cuz they may be negative.
walk good.

6:40 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I like this blog - what template is used? Thanks from a Clothing Accessory info site.

6:52 pm  
Blogger sweet trini said...

it's a standard blogger template, called "dots dark" designed by douglas bowman.
walk good.

7:22 pm  

Post a Comment

<< Home

Monday, August 22, 2005

r.i.p.

i've never been attached to a television show the way i was to hbo's oz and six feet under- nothing has been able to replace oz for me since it ended and now i feel at a loss after six feet under ended last night.
all that's left for me now is jon stewart, and i love him, but it's not the same.
today i can't stop missing this show and thinking about this last season, and i feel so ridiculous...
walk good.

3 Comments:

Blogger Jake said...

We actually dropped HBO at the old apartment when "Oz" got cancelled. I hope those bastard HBO bigwigs felt that one in the ass.

1:07 pm  
Blogger Peong said...

For the record, I loved OZ (any show with man on man rape in the opening credits has to be hardcore), but it didn't hold a candle to six feet under. This last season was the best one yet, and the final show - oy. I couldn't get the ending out of my head for the last day and a half. It keeps popping into my head and catching me off gaurd, much like what happens when someone you know dies. I am not trying to compare a tv show to actual death, just making a comment on how strong the show was and how well and unapologetically they dealt with death.

8:43 pm  
Blogger Jake said...

Never saw SFU, unfortunately. Maybe I will check out the DVDs.

In contrast, Oz ended on a low note, unfortunately. They clearly got canceled before they planned to, because they were ramming half-seasons worth of plot into single episodes towards the end. The last couple eps had a sort of "ahh, let's just get this over with" rushed-ness too them.

12:48 pm  

Post a Comment

<< Home

more later...

...but in the meanwhile, a quick broadcast from the radio station to thank jake for not making me try to fulfill some notion of exotic foreigners, even those who may have silverware fetishes (and perhaps, i admit, prejudices).
and to tell patrick (who i've been meaning to link forever) that i didn't acquire grims' name when we got married.
i am still myself, but the postcards you've been sending (thank you, we love them) are very amusing, with us being listed in whatever way you thought made sense @ the time. i have 3 so far, i think, each one sent to a slightly different variation of our name tags. so i think you should just use whatever combination of names you like; it's been cracking us up...

walk good.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home

Thursday, August 18, 2005

story time

so i know nobody needs me to tell them how wonderful it was seeing stevie wonder live in tobago, but except for american airlines being the shittiest airborne transport ever, we had a great trip in every way. i'll never fly american airlines again after our australia trip this christmas- i just glad we only using them to get to l.a. and switch to qantas. my mom's been a flight attendant my whole life so i know a few things about the business, and american airlines is the worst. they should be boycotted and deserve no reprieve.
but everything else was so good that i won't go into details about the sloppy appearance, shitty service and stank attitude of that airline. except to mention that when one cow in a uniform tells me to do something and another heifer in the same hideous uniform sees fit to shout at me in front of a packed aircraft about it, then follow up by berating my husband for nothing, they should be more concerned about the fact that i forgot to remove my pocket knife from my box before flying and the inconvenience and profiling under the guise of airport security didn't catch it, in spite of putting me through an extra search. needless to say, the travel experience took me right back to hating america and everything it stands for, and if grims didn't look so sad when i said it, i really wouldn't have bothered to come back. fuck it. i don't wanna be here in the first fucking place.

anyway, on to better and funner things.
maracas (pictures in previous post) on wednesday was beautiful- even the post-rain sandflies that took advantage of my newly waxed legs and left bites that still itched a week later didn't spoil that- and there was almost nobody there, which i love (of course, having been to rehoboth, i know that we are blessed to never have truly crowded beaches in trinbago because with my general hatred of people, i'd never go).
so from the time grims touches down in trini, my people start giving him food. people who know me from birth don't give me presents, just him. we landed and mom figured we should have doubles for lunch @ the airport, so he was in his glee. then on the way home, we stopped by the da costas, and aunty pat gave him julie mangoes just picked from granny's tree. later we passed by the clements, and he got more mangoes, oranges, and a zaboca. we went by aunty noble so i could find out about lilliput's anniversary show (going back home end of september for it- more later) and she told him come to our production meeting the next day and she'd feed him. so now when i go home, i don't have to go get the things i miss eating. they come to grims- except for food from the breakfast shed, which he still hasn't had because we said we'd pass there on the way home from the port when we got back from tobago, and grabbed the papers that morning before leaving 'bago to find the headline breakfast shed torn down today. they had to decide to start building the new shed right now...
anyway, we took the lynx over to tobago, which was a first for all of us (my last boat trip was on the very slow panorama) and i like this new fast ride. and it's comfy and shit too. the bar service was poor, but i met mom's friend "flookypoonks" and that name made up for everything.
friday night's show was a little choppy, but in spite of the flow being off, machel montano and xtatic were hot as always, rudder's performance was still the closest i ever come to a religious experience, and i survived shaggy's complete lack of stage prescence (i know it hard for anybody to look good onstage after machel, but is not like shaggy didn't know what he was following- he coulda try to keep up). and a youth man from south named darryl sheppard was a pleasant surprise. he mash up the dance on the pan, and his original compositions were the best stuff he played. listen out for him.
grims wore his (tottenham hot)spurs shirt and took a picture in front of the tobago gourmet jazz festival banner for their 'spurs shirts around the world' site, and got hailed out by some other 'spurs fan in the crowd. and we were photographed for triniscene, which cracked me up because until now i was the only person i knew who hadn't been on there, and now i'm there with grims from vermont (or will be, when they post their jazz festival pics). i guess his honourary trini-ness is now officially documented.
we stayed in a nice little place in bacolet, just up the hill from the beach, so we slept to the sound and smell of the sea and woke with the birds, and in keeping with the previous "too much information" on my brazilian wax (yes, that was a warning that you may want to skip ahead to the next paragraph) i can say there's nothing like getting a freshly waxed poonani licked to the sound of the waves without having to get sand in your snatch.
bacolet beach is nice, reminds me of hundred steps in trini, but having to walk back up the hundred-plus steps is worse when you also have to walk back up the steep hill to the house we stayed in. the walk up was so wicked, the second time we went, mom said fuck it and drove the whole less-than-eighth-a-mile down the hill to avoid it.
saturday we skipped jazz so grims could do the glass-bottomed-boat tour of buccoo reef and the coral gardens and go snorkeling, and then chill in the nylon pool. some man named tarzan (yes, i asked, but he was vague about it) booked us for a decent price and grims loved it. i think he woulda spent the whole day snorkeling through coral gardens if he could. his glee was beat only by alex (age 6-7) who not only thought every wabine he saw through the bottom of the little boat was a shark, but also came on board @ 2pm with a dead fish in his aunt lydia's backpack, because when the men were pulling seine that morning he apparently threw his maybe 50lbs of body weight in on their end of the nets, and thus felt that the fish he was given was his special prize. by that afternoon when we met alex on the glass-bottomed-boat, lemme tell you that "special" was not enough word for the smell of that fish.
oh- side note for those of you who know tobago but haven't been recently: the food on store bay is no longer about miss jean- apparently things have gone downhill since she died- and tarzan (who i trust implicitly) swears by miss esme.
we also went up signal hill so me+grims could finally see the land we'll be building on (not that my father knew where it was- we had to wait for the clements to reach 'bago and take us to see our land) so now i'm all excited because it's 10 minutes from everywhere we wanna be, and the view is gorgeous.
and sunday's show- there's nothing that needs saying about how good it is to hear stevie wonder live. my only complaint is that the band, who sounded great up until he took stage, just couldn't keep up with him on pieces like master blaster. they did fine on the slow tunes, but when stevie got going, i kept thinking he needed amp fiddler backing him instead.
ken philmore and robbie greenidge, mavis john, sparrow, and the signal hill almuni choir were all as good as, and even better than i knew they would be, and the flow of the show was much smoother. the low point of the night was, strangely, india.arie, who was very unexpectedly disappointing. some even said boring. but my problem with her was that although she looked and sounded great, the attitude that came through her performance ruined it. she was obviously overly micromanaging the band (who had no problem rocking the hell out of her shit), had a silly flute folly (and then didn't even play it well or long enough to be worthwhile, after the fuss), and affected way too much posturing with her guitar. the whole time she was on i recognised that she sounded good, but she wasn't engaging and i couldn't enjoy her. and her bra strap visibly cutting across her otherwise naked back in her otherwise beautiful halter top pissed me off too, on a much smaller scale. lame. her new song (supposedly hitting radio in a few weeks) which she chose to premiere in 'bago is called i am not my hair and i like it, in spite of not enjoying her set.

in other news, yesterday, after being back less than 12hours, we had a fire on our roof. no damage, and the fire trucks came round the corner right quick, reassuringly.
we set it up to have the roof redone yesterday, and while they were torching it, apparently their propane tank caught fire and lit up our roof. i was upstairs doing something, and came down to find grims shouting about helping him with the hose, and found myself running out in the backyard in my panty to not help much because he and the roof dudes handled it mercifully fast. i did know where our fire extinguisher was though, and after they used it i finally know what the hell that gross yellow powder covering the inside of the stove our house came with (now thankfully replaced with the sexy, new, stainless steel, five-burner convection oven) was. all this time i'd been scared, thinking it was rat poison, but i guess it was just proof that the stove (or possibly the cook, but more likely the stove) was a menace and had had to be extinguished.
alright, my fingers hurt and i'm still catching up and preparing to be miranda in shakespeare's the tempest, so i should go work through that too-long script.
fiction sooncome.
walk good.

ps: all jazz festival mentions have links in a previous post.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I am not on trini scene ,and i didn't skip to the other paragraph go Eric. two thumbs way up .


nico

12:10 pm  
Blogger Jake said...

In our defense, "American Airlines" is just a name. If they change it to "Stank-Ass Fat Ho Airlines," would that improve your opinion of us as a people?

1:12 pm  

Post a Comment

<< Home

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

back in black

well we back in dc and i blacker than ever. even grims is officially a brownin' now.
just a quickie to say there are stories to be told and new fiction coming soon, but first, i'ma spend the last day off with grims before we both go back out to work...
walk good. talk soon.
ps: i'm sure i don't even need to say it, but stevie wonder was amazing.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home

Monday, August 08, 2005

one more thing...

so i completely didn't mention how well pericles went. it was good enough that somebody else asked me to read miranda for his staged reading (for the same series) of the tempest- dc does a lot of staged reading in summer. this will be my 4th.
but it was fun, flirting with watkins (until i died) and having an excuse to look cute (which rarely happens onstage)- cam (director) said there's so much travel in pericles that she wanted us to wear the most exotic outfit in our wardrobes- needless to say, when an american tells me that, then puts me onstage with 10 other americans, my cultural sense of style makes it easy for me. and that's not ego, just my experience talking. i don't consider myself exotic, but americans who don't know me, do.

and that 'one more thing'- those with qualms about too much information, stop now.
bravehearted: i got my first-ever wax today, and accidentally got a brazilian. for those who don't know, a brazilian wax involves tearing out (yes, from the roots) all the genital hair, leaving just the tiniest 'landing strip' from your clit to the middle of your bush (well, where the middle of my bush had been, because by then it was no longer). and when i say all genital hair, i mean specifically that there was a point when i had my legs propped open on either wall so 'heidi' could get to those less-reachable labial areas, and another when i had my legs crossed @ the ankles (while laying on my back) and pulled over my head so she could get in from the back.
can i say ouch.
i said i just wanted my bikini line done, but i think when i mentioned my fear of the brazilian, she thought i meant i was scared because i planned to get one. and by the time i realised how far she was waxing (genital pain is the kind of pain you don't want to think about too hard when you know it won't be over for another little bit) it was too late to stop her- how fucked up would it be to have half a brazilian wax...
so i feel like a stripper every time i look down at myself, and have a whole new respect for my girls down @ royal palace who do this every few weeks, just for us pervs.
grims likes it though...
walk good.

1 Comments:

Blogger Jake said...

If this is at all comforting, I've known you for six years and I don't find a damn thing about you exotic anymore. Except maybe the Brazilian wax. And eating waffles with a spoon.

5:00 pm  

Post a Comment

<< Home

fiction #7- "soucouyant" part 7.

the final online installment of this piece:

"On ground level people in a uproar about their family getting kidnapped and set up to get kill, and the government was in big fights with other governments about whose fault it was and who should handle the fallout. We know the “bait” was already ready to dead because they know the score. They didn’t want to go up there in the first damn place. Everybody waiting to hear the damage, but nobody coming down, and nobody brave enough to go up.Another week pass and all we could do is assume the bait gone through. Anybody who had friend or family stuck there give up on them as soon as they see the kidnap footage. We didn’t know what the science boys really thought would happen, but coming back alive was not an option. The more you feed anything, the stronger it grow, and some things will not be contained. And some parts of nature above man on the food chain – (writer edit)
Then finally one lone scientist come stumbling down from El Tucuche.
He didn’t know where he was, who he was, or what the ass he was doing. He come down crying for home; don’t know where home is, but it was the only word in his mouth. The government pick him up fast fast and take him to St. Clair nursing home for recuperation and evaluation, but for days all that man could say was “home”.
Now you know the whole country and everybody who had send out researchers glued to TV and radio hoping for news. All them in foreign who had tried to send search parties for their people up El Tucuche and fail, now trying to send interrogators to ask this man what happen out there. The doctors manage to keep them away for awhile, saying he in bad shape and need time to rest, because they overstand what the man must be going through. But nobody outside of the Caribbean knew for real what went on.
It wasn’t like the government could exactly explain to the world what it was. What they could say? That somewhere in the vicinity of El Tucuche, some old woman shedding her skin at night, flying to the camp as a ball of fire, and sucking the blood of the frog researchers…
That just wouldn’t work. Even if they could make somebody believe in it – why they didn’t say something before the researchers come instead of exposing them to something like that? Why they didn’t do something about it as soon as the first one went missing? Or the second – or third? Why it is that one whole government with a police force, army, and host of services at its disposal could not bring four unarmed scientists down off their mountain? Then the government would have to explain that the boss-man thought soucouyant was just another story, because he move too far from the canefield and silk-cotton tree, and politics have no time for folk stories. You see how this leading to unanswerable questions. With jumbies, it easier to not believe unless you have to.
So when this man recover enough to remember who and what he is and where he was, he start talking to any and everybody in St. Clair like he had something to get off his chest in a hurry. Then somebody from the company he was working for come to see him and he stop talk. By the time the news crews get to him, he wasn’t saying nothing. He don’t know what happened. He just find himself alone up there so he come down. Rumour was the company man tell him they wanted to publish whatever information he had and he had to hush until he reach back home. But the staff already hear the story by then…
Apparently them science boys really bait their trap with the police and government reps, and come night the bait would disappear, but nobody see anything. They would find the body in the bush later, but still nothing in the trap. When they run out of bait, they start drawing straws to pick from among themselves, and so the six start dwindling. You see how white people crazy?
So our boy in St. Clair was the last man standing, watching his last colleague in the box, and he finally see it. It was the first time any of them actually see what they was trying to catch. He say he couldn’t believe it, but his eye tell him a big fiery ball fly down into the box and back out before he could lock it down. When he look back, his partner was gone. He vaguely remember coming down from the camp but don’t know how he reach St. Clair.The only thing in his mind between leaving the camp and his hospital bed, is he think he see a tree on his way down El Tucuche with not a leaf on it, and something hanging out a hole in the trunk that look like a empty human skin..."


of course, there's another little surprise @ the end, but this is where the story ends in this particular forum.
me+grims+stevie will talk about which story we think should come next, and if i get my shit together, you should have the beginning of a new one by the 20th.
i'll try to post while in trinbago but if i don't, know that stevie has turned me into a puddle of ecstasy, the beach is the best it's ever been because i need it so desperately, and we eating our way through the islands.

smallislandgirl- yes, i'll be @ the trinbago gourmet jazz festival this weekend to hear david rudder, mighty sparrow, stevie wonder, india.arie, ken "professor" philmore, machel montano, mavis john (the good link for her is down- lame!), and doug e. fresh+slick rick- after we hit maracas with cheewah (world's best tattoo artist) tomorrow afternoon. i'll be one of the many short, dreadlocked, tattooed black girls there, but i'll be one of the few accompanied by a 6'2", 218lbs. white man from vermont, and a skinny, long-haired, multitattooed chinee boy (in trini at least). if you see me, feel free to hail me out, i'm less of a hater when home.
walk good.

ps: i didn't think it necessary to find links for the more internationally recognised performers on that list...

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

i'm insanely jealous. i'm pouting. i want to be in trini for a weekend and i want ink.

10:19 pm  

Post a Comment

<< Home

Sunday, August 07, 2005

love that santana and al green

the other day one of the things on my to-do list was to finally repair some scratched cd's before our trip. so today after posting, i started listening to them to check that all was fixed. and i'm so moved i had to come back and say how much i missed and didn't realise i was missing.
i love al green and santana and krs-one and cream, and shortly i will be loving the love jones soundtrack. i'm in love with my music collection, and right now it's the best feeling to uninterruptedly listen to albums i've been away from for far too long. carlos just delivered the sweetest samba pa ti i ever heard. i developed an instant crush, all over again.
and the beauty of this is that whenever i'm getting into my music i have to play some stevie, but today and tomorrow i'm giving myself the most delightful denial and anticipation, and not listening to any of his work because i can hold out for his live performance in less than a week. the hedonist in me is saying that i should listen now anyway because nothing will be able to diminish the live show, but for now i'm abstaining from my favourite drug, knowing he'll take me to higher ground soon enough.
walk good.

addendum: as i clicked 'publish' on this post, grims called and told me that ibrahim ferrer died yesterday. i will be adding the buena vista social club to today's selection- it's sad that by the time these musicians got together for the film and album, they were all elderly and we're losing them fast. here's some info on ferrer's other recent works. and more here.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home

fiction #6- "soucouyant" part 6.

they're baaaack...
and since i have the staged reading of pericles, then tomorrow is my first wax ever before i wash and pack for trinbago tuesday morning (stevie wonder live! i'm losing my fucking mind!) i figure i'll try to get another chapter in before we fly because we'll be gone a week and i don't know if i'll find my way to the internet, but i definitely know i won't have my stories with me. so i'll get some fiction up, hopefully post about the jazz festival and getting new ink while i'm gone (yes, i know that as an actor who needs to be changeable, 5 tattoos is already technically too many, but i can't help myself) and maybe be moving on to a new piece upon my return (since i won't be posting any story in its entirety) (and jake, or any other friends who want to read completed versions, email me so i can remail you the document).

"So they ask enough of the right questions to know bars wouldn’t be enough, but when people tell them the truth about what they wanted to trap, they insist no such thing exist. Meanwhile, we know they just feeding it. Two holes in the neck and a dry-out body could only be one thing, and the supply of fresh blood only making it stronger. But they refuse to believe. They tell themselves our stories don’t hold water and decide their research was more important. All I could say is the research companies must be paying a pound and a crown, because I sure as hell wasn’t staying there with three dead and the local guides deserted, trying to make a way to hold this thing they say they don’t even believe in. That is a special breed, staying there when they know something hunting them that they have no idea how to fight.
For the next week, every time they lose another one – which was almost every night – somebody would come down and call the next one to go up and join them. The science boys still don’t know what it is they want to catch, but the replacements determined as ever. They say it was their life work to learn and discover, and so they had to see and understand for themselves what this thing was causing all this damage.
They just couldn’t leave it alone.
The government get word about what they was doing by the third replacement-run and set up the same two representatives at the foot of El Tucuche, bright and early, to catch them on the next trip and tell them that what they doing is not sanctioned by Trinidad and Tobago and we would not be held liable – they were warned not to be up there without guides, but now they have a whole crew up there without permission, so their safety is not guaranteed. But the scientists say they going to proceed at their own risk and continue on their way back up.
When we see the reps' visit on the news that evening, the science boy who had been up there from the start was looking rough, like he wouldn’t last much longer. And every time somebody come down to fetch the next replacement, we hear they looking worse and worse. They turn fanatic about their project, telling whoever they pass along the way ‘how important this work is’ and how honoured they were to be going up. But it wasn’t like they understood the habits of the creature they were hunting. Every night they had another one gone and the survivors left with nothing but their fear in that cage they build.
By the end of that week, the six up El Tucuche were the last six; no more replacements and still nothing in the trap. We wasn’t sure yet what they build, but we was sure it wasn’t working.
Meanwhile it looking bad for Trinbago with all these scientists dead and missing with no explanation, and the government unable to produce the remaining ones. So they send the representatives again, up mountain this time, with the police to forcibly bring them down. Their respective countries wanted to know what the big secret was, and demanding their researchers back since they stopped getting reports from them. But of course, in true Trini fashion, the boss-man only send the same two representatives and two police. He figure after weeks in the bush chasing jumbies with colleagues disappearing left, right and centre, the science boys would be more than ready to come down now, and if not, they wouldn’t be strong enough to resist anyway. But again, he underestimate.
The news follow the entourage up El Tucuche, and come flying back down with footage of the damn crazy scientists tying up police and government reps right in front of what was apparently the trap. It looked like a big, mostly see-through box, reinforced with steel beams at the corners and along the walls, with a matching lid tie up with a thick wire-rope that they would have to drop down if they see anything in the box – of course by the time anybody was brave enough to go back there after the fuss die down, all they find was a big puddle of plastic melted into the ground over by the huts.

Well it was one bacchanal. The footage show them scrawny, hard-up-looking science boys explaining badly (too much technological terms) about this ‘entrapment and containment device’ they constructed and how they working shifts to observe it for any sign of activity. And they was only too happy to have the incident on tape. They tell our news-boys it was proper and necessary documentation of their work in process, and the arrival of the whole local crew was very ‘serendipitous’ because it giving them the opportunity to ‘implement a new plan’. And they only mention, as if it wasn’t that important, that this ‘new’ plan was to bait it with the police and representatives that went up there to talk them down."

walk good.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home

Saturday, August 06, 2005

saturday

didn't make it back to the machine yesterday, but it was for a good cause- we finally ate @ rosa mexicano, thanks to restaurant week, because i had a hard time believing that mexican food (which i love, but consider very simple) could possibly be worth $22 a plate. so we took advantage of the reduced restaurant week price and had dinner there last night, and lemme tell you, it's worth the $22 entree, $11 app and $14 dessert. and i'm a hardcore value-for-$ person, so i not playing. it was, hands down, the best mexican food i ever had, and i liked it more than cafe atlantico (which we tried earlier in the week, and thought was alright). so now the favourite restaurants are red sage, rosa mexicano and raku- so much for losing 10lbs. oh well.
and oh shit! chrystyna+stephen, who we had dinner with last night are pregnant!
everybody's doing it, but it doesn't make me feel any more ready to go there. i'd have to give up lipton yellow label and sushi and even some cooked fish, and drugs+alcohol. i feel ok about the prospect of giving up my life to my child when the time comes, but not the food!

so today i'm rehearsing for the staged reading of shakespeare's pericles (i think that's the one) that i'm in tomorrow. cam's directing, and i'm apparently watkins' (of stripper-dream fame) love interest and goddess diana, so it should be fun. rehearsal's noon-5pm, so i have to run off momentarily, but maybe between that and liming with glen+ilana tonight i'll get back to post the next fiction 'chapter'.
walk good.

1 Comments:

Blogger Jake said...

Yes! Jenn and I have made Rosa Mexicana the site of her semester-ending celebratory dinner two semesters running! Their tortilla soup is the best soup ever prepared by man or God.

We did Galileio and Ceiba for restaurant week. Galileio was way too expensive (I mean, would have been any other week) and extremely snobby, but the food was very good. Ceiba knocked it out of the park--super yummy South American food, and not that expensive. Just a great place.

2:07 pm  

Post a Comment

<< Home

Thursday, August 04, 2005

thanks for reading

so to answer rosie, thanks for asking, i've mostly managed to remember in spite of lacking a shakespearian reminder- sometimes a few hours late, but i've taken it every day, and as far as i know, there's nobody growing inside me, thank grims.
and jake, you right, the old lions do fight back, so i guess that leaves us with the chinese (? i think) village that sends the elderly of a family off to the river with no food or protection to die when a baby's born...

so i got this computer and wireless internet access, but with scrawn and grims' mom both staying with us this week (and dionne in the guest room, of course) while i was still @ the radio station, i still haven't blogged like i'd like to get back to. and tonight, when i was counting on getting some words down, i somehow managed to burn my right index finger and this hurts like a bitch.
so thanks for reading, but i'll be back tomorrow instead.
walk good.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home