I put out a call on Twitter, to the effect of “someone please send me something that doesn’t suck to read, this is getting ridiculous”. Ian from @atomicfez who I have met only once but made an impression and we chat on the Twitter, sent me an eBook copy of a book he’d published called The Terror and the Tortoiseshell, A Benji Spriteman Mystery by John Travis. He basically told me it was something about cats, Ian knows I like cats, an extra piece of thoughtfulness there I thought. I finished the piece of trash I was currently crawling through and with some skepticism set out to read the new book; I’m extremely picky with what I will read when it comes to fiction Mystery novels.

Benji the cat asleep on his owners legs awakens to screams, which turn out to be animals murdering humans, The Terror has started. He suddenly finds himself to be of human size and able to stand on and walk with his back paws. This has happened to the rest of the animals as well, lions, tigers, bears, dogs, with no explanation for what caused The Terror. There is also no explanation for the odd cat or dog found still living as if it were the good old days, unable to talk and just a pet. The animals fill the zoo with the last of the humans found on the streets, most finding themselves cast out of their previous homes. They are now called Humes or Sappies, barely seen for fear of being viciously slain. Even new organizations like The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Humans [SPCH] can’t stop the madness or heinous murders. Benji Spriteman takes on the roll of his old owner Jimmy, this has become commonplace for a lot of animals, if they don’t take over their jobs they still take on many defining characteristics. Benji, now a detective, sets out to solve the hume murders.

When you first start to read The Terror and the Tortoiseshell, the talking animals and their take over will cause anyone who has also read Animal Farm to try and draw comparisons. It doesn’t take long to realize you are reading a better story and one with very few similarities. I found the ninety-five page Animal Farm tedious, it felt like it took me as long to read as the just over three hundred page Travis novel did. It may be hard to imagine that a book with the word terror in the title could be funny, but you’d be wrong, from Rats taking over the newspaper and publishing it with no sentence structure, grammar or spell checking, to a restaurant that serves nothing but human dishes, there are surprises around every corner and just when you think there is nowhere for the story to go other than to be solved but you still have one hundred pages to go, Benji and his buddies will cough up even more hair balls to chase after.

Animals behaving like animals but on two paws instead of four towering over humans, feeding on humans because The Terror has happened, turned out to be just as dark as it was fun and hilarious. The writing is witty and intelligent, I was able to lose myself into the absurdity of it all while not feeling like the message of the book was being pushed in my face. I would definitely recommend it and thank my buddy Ian for giving me the eBook copy, about time I read a good book this year.

I remember a woman I no longer speak with asking me once why I didn’t like the The Time Traveler’s Wife and I said well the time traveling babies for one and she was all, well that made sense to me, and right then, I knew the friendship was over. Ok, I’m not that big of a bitch but are you kidding me? Sure, it may have made sense but it still remains one of the most ridiculous things I had EVER read in my entire life of reading. And before I move on here I feel I should mention that I watched the movie, of course I did, Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams, I love them both. I guess I’m just used to Hollywood destroying great novels and this led to genuine intrigue because with my over the top dislike for this book I had an odd feeling that it wouldn’t make a bad movie and what do you know, I enjoyed it. The parts I had liked from the book where mainly the parts put on screen and although I still chuckled at the time traveling babies I found it easier to accept in movie form.

The thing with Audrey Niffenegger and why I was so ready to read her new book, Her Fearful Symmetry was because she isn’t a bad writer, in fact until I read the new book, I had The Time Traveler’s Wife rated 3 of 5 stars on Goodreads because for a first novel I did find her writing style to have a certain impressive flow to it. But this has now been lowered to 2 stars after rating Her Fearful Symmetry 1 of 5 stars. Her writing skills are over shadowed by statements which read like sentence fragments from a plot that in too many places seems underdeveloped and others needlessly overdeveloped, which I find interesting because it is apparent that she did a lot of research for this book. So much so that the write-up in the back totes her as an employee which I found even more intriguing until realizing it was an extremely unfortunate oversight in the editing as she only volunteered there during research for the book. The write-up is so misleading I allowed myself to become excited thinking she was going to spend a lot of time focusing on the famous Highgate Cemetery in London, which is now on my list of places I plan to spend AT LEAST a full day exploring when I finally make it to London, but not due to any glorious descriptions from her. There are many famous people buried there, Karl Marx for one, she over-mentions him about five times. I get it, Karl Marx is buried at Highgate Cemetery in London. I heard you the first time.

Aside from the cemetery this novel centers on two generations of twins and their family secrets. Ghosts and death are a prominent theme but just like with the time traveling babies I found myself bursting out laughing when after the passing of one of the characters their lover lays on the bed of the deceased and masturbates, then later returns to masturbate again only to have the ghost brush herself against him and apparently he can feel it and she passes her dead cold hands over his body and his penis and IS THIS REALLY HAPPENING AM I REALLY READING THIS?

I don’t understand why Niffenegger felt it necessary to volunteer at the cemetery and to take the guided tours when really we are only taken on ONE tour through the cemetery and even that is rushed in description due to conflicts with the characters. Because of the fascination I hold with cemeteries I did appreciate her writing on some of the history of Highgate but the link that is supposed to be drawn to the character studying it, is so weak it falls way short and is rarely addressed other than in simple yes or no questions asked of the character. This was a novel where the characters I liked faded off into the background and weren’t paid enough attention, and characters I didn’t like and felt offered little or no value at all to the story resulted in highly descriptive wastes of time.

When I compare this book with The Time Traveler’s Wife I have to say what I never thought I would, that I liked it 1 star more. I felt short changed on a book that had a lot of potential. This novel had many things I love to read about, twins, death, cemeteries, ghosts, and yet it failed to develop any of the characters enough for me to care at all what happened to them or they were involved in down right absurd story lines that had nothing to do with Highgate. Overall, a very disappointing read.

© abcIV

© abcIV

Yesterday we went on a mission to find the beaver but we came up short we did not see the beaver. We did see;

• birds
• an ant
• turtles
• mallards
• Canada geese
• swans
• other types of ducks
• raccoons
• a heron
• horses; and
• a bald eagle

Sincerest apologies if I have missed any animals that we saw, literally. We realize those aren’t the only animals that exist down at Lost Lagoon.

© abcIV

I am always looking for times to work on taking photos so I did take some standard photos of the regular animals we saw and so did Adam we have to trade back forth on the camera which is a pain in the ass but there are worse things in life.  [his photos in this post will all be credited to abcIV]

This photo that he took is the creepiest shit ever he said “I knew you’d love it when I took it” well, I do love it but it is still creepy. Just add some night goggles make it night and that is straight out of Silence of the Lambs that IS Buffalo Bill coming for me. And the funny thing is that the photo following I don’t even know he has taken the creepy photo I am just annoyed because I don’t have the camera.

© abcIV

© abcIV

It started to rain on the mission so we didn’t get photos of the baby Canadian geese and the baby ducklings. They were adorable but we were on mission Beaver Hunt 2009 anyway.

My allergies didn’t bother me till later when we got home it was nice of them to hold off on the inevitable attack. I am SO IN LOVE with my Neti Pot. [more on that at a later date]

I am not good and speedy enough to catch the good shit yet but the swans are horny fuckers right now and I was running around the Lagoon while one male chased a female down running across the water sort of like Jesus [in movies I've seen] would and tried to copulate with her but she was NOT in the mood he backed off pretty quick which was annoying because I wanted to see them get it on.

Made another VLogBlog busted out the Guitar Hero and I warmed up on expert to Schism, Tool and I’ve never even passed that song on expert and I fail at 98% but I’d watch it anyway. We’ll film a song I rule at on expert soon enough.

My Twitter is broken and it is driving me sort of insane. I had no idea that I had formed an addiction to it. None, for serious, but not being able to jump up at will and write 140 characters of word vomit is not FAIR. My account has been sent to engineering and there is NO WORD on how long it will take it only took me THREE attempts to get them to actually look at my page with Rok Hed as my photo to see that my page is BONKED, it is blank. Twitter hates me.

Last night we watched Doubt which was AWESOME. Highly recommend it, made for some good pillow talk.  I LOVE Amy Adams at present, she had me at Enchanted, looking at her list of movies I’m sort of late to the table on her. The rest of the cast is great, the sets are great, and I was able to visualize it on a stage as a play which made me appreciate it even more. You are welcome for that incredibly deep review I just gave it.

I am almost done reading Slaughterhouse-Five my very first ever Kurt Vonnegut novel and I am loving it and am going to have seventy-five dollars in free books coming my way soon so I may order some more of him I am thinking Cat’s Cradle?

I have only read five and this book this year so far which is pathetic but I am still so fucking depressed right now that all I really do is sit and do nothing and listen to music. It isn’t just writers block this is different. Coffee is getting cold I gotta go.  I have lost track of when I showered last so I gotta do it. OH BUT I have been changing my underwear though just fyi on that cause I know in the past I said I’d wear it like five days and shit.  I’m on too much meds for that shit and sweat too much at night, night sweets love me unlike Twitter.

PS. Not being able to Twitter about The Masters at Augusta National SUCKS ASS! Mike Weir finished at -4 today leaders are -6 at present but nice start Mikey.

2002 didn’t end well, 2003 would be the year I started to see the shrink I still see today. I remember thinking that it was ‘just my luck’ as well that this would undoubtedly bring even more stress into my life before I even saw it:

You have been summonsed to appear as a jury panelist for a criminal trial, Regina vs. Malik, Bagri, and Reyat commonly referred to as the AIR INDIA TRIAL.
The date of jury selection is March 29, 2003.
Estimates of trial length run from TWENTY FOUR TO THIRTY SIX MONTHS.

So then I thought HOLY FUCK what does this even mean? And when I told my work they agreed that is was ‘just my luck’ which was awkward and we all chuckled but none of us were laughing.

I headed straight upstairs to the internet and had reinforcements on the way over in the way of one best friend Hannah and we searched for information on it and back then it was harder to find and I got scared searching for information on it WHAT IF THEY KNEW?

I believe strongly in civic duty, but at the time, for a woman of twenty-five living alone and knowing that it had nothing to do with the books I’d read I just simply was not mentally sound enough to appear. In the ten days I had to send them back my Juror Certification Form, I spent it getting letters quoting a medical condition from my family Doctor and my work appointed in the mean time therapist. It wasn’t just my depression though it was also my headaches. There was just no way.

Just thinking about being on that jury scared the living shit out of me. This was when all the true crime novels flipped in my head from jury duty is cool to holy fuck who wants to be on this JURY ummm not ME or any (Criminal) juries talk about a romanticized wake up call, I’m into the darker side of life the macabre the tainted but JURY TAMPERING in neon blared in front of those twenty five year old eyes and I chose sanity.

In the end not only did it turn out to be one of the largest, if not the largest summons sent out here up until the Pickton case broke, even former Vancouver Canuck, Trevor Linden was summonsed. I’m pretty sure trying to at least make the playoffs was his way out of having to appear.  It did eventually go to a judge only trial. I don’t think I was the only one afraid of jury tampering.  Even knowing with all the people summonsed I probably wasn’t going to get picked with my luck I wasn’t about to take that chance, and with my request not to appear accepted I tried not to think about it, there were parts that were undeniably stressful and scary, about being called for THAT jury with our without a mental illness.

In all honesty I didn’t follow the trial but I remember being outraged at the verdict, all were found not guilty except for Reyat he plead guilty to manslaughter admitting to building the bomb used on the flight, he got five years and was denied parole in 2007.

Earlier in the week I watched the movie Air India 182, a documentary by award winning Canadian Film director Sturla Gunnarsson and was impressed but the whole thing was surreal a total mishmash of emotions when it hit me that I was eight years old, bloody EIGHT when this happened and then at twenty-five it showed up in my mailbox via the judicial system and here I was listening to the family members of the victims recount that day, seeing the pain on their faces and talk about it with little resolve given the outcome. Any thoughts of even possibly being in a court room at that time were not a nice place to picture.

On June 22, 1985 , Air India 182 left Montréal, bound for Delhi via London Heathrow. It never made it.

Four hours after takeoff, 200 miles off the Irish coast, a bomb ripped through the baggage compartment and the plane disintegrated at 30,000 feet, killing all 329 people on board. It was the world’s deadliest act of aviation terror before 9/11.

Now at thirty-one the movie frightened me, but not likely in entirely rational ways and so I highly recommend it. It was very moving, it was heart breaking and made me tremendously angry but it is done in an extremely tasteful manner. I don’t know it just makes me think about all the non fiction I read and all of the documentaries I watch and how there is always something in them that gives me that disconnect whether right or not, whether I donate to charity or not, and this movie didn’t have that for me. So I would have to say it scared me real.

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.  - Cyril Connolly

The first one I saw years ago after many a liberty had been taken with it when it appears at the very beginning of The Believer, a bloody fantastic movie.

I hate and I love. Why do I do this, you may ask? I do not know, but I feel it, and I am tortured.- Catullus

Today while reading through quotes on goodreads I came across this one by Marilyn Monroe that is SO ME I started to cry. It was too long for Twitter so I made it my Facebook status.

I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best. - Marilyn Monroe

I can’t remember the last time I took something so literally.

• Since finding out that my parents are getting divorced I have danced around in a bodysuit, dressed seriously bad, busted my mom out of Bali on a mostly covert mission starring stealth moves only, been given the best ever ‘no skanks allowed’, the long edition NOT the ‘clam slam’ robe from the airport in Denpasar Bali, ASIA to be exact. It is so huge I have been pretending I am a boxer whilst wearing it, #parentsdivorce scary YouTube video coming soon set to Eye of the Tiger, Survivor OR S&G The Boxer. I’m not SAD yet. I am mostly hyper.  It is easier to picture them apart than I thought it would be. Or it might be that my dad is sitting pretty in Bali probably ordering in Balinese whores and my mother is stuck in freezing cold Toronto with her mother. Who knows? AND I cut my hair AND I have been eating A LOT of peanut butter cookies. OH and I have been smoking joints like they are cigarettes. Note to self = must for serious stop that last part. BUT almost everyone I have told that to has said I WOULD BE TOO, so it makes it harder to stop.

• I read The Reader, Bernhard Schlink in some ridiculously fast amount of time that made me feel like a fast reader for the duration of the book, my eyes flew across the prose so beautiful that when I compare it to other novels I have loved before I am reminded of The Road, Cormac McCarthy and how it not only remains one of my favourite books but it left me wanting more, and I love a book that I can praise for many a reason, but it leaving me wanting more is probably up there with my favourite things about stories and their inescapable endings.  I am looking forward to writing more Books vs Movie posts.

• Although in all reality the computer being as broken as it is SUCKS the ONLY good thing is that the Media Player is also broken so it isn’t counting how many times I have listened to the new Neko Case album Middle Cyclone. I am seriously thinking over one hundred times by now because I don’t just know the words I know the correct words to the songs. See, I have Scrobbling enabled on Last.fm most of the time and I already have a gross disparity between Neko Case number of listens = 4,618 and Tool coming in a distant second = 1,020 and I’ve been listening to Tool since 1996, kinda freaky in a freaky way that the Neko count is actually low but that brings me to my review, which I can write very quickly for you right here in two words: FUCKING AWESOME. Waiting with a “glacier’s patience” for it paid off.  We have tickets for the June show already but I messed up and bought the tickets in American dollars and I haven’t told Adam, hey babe, sorry bout that, see you on the couch. But we would rather give the money to things set up by her people anyway.

• I was randomly thinking how I like being able to look at a photo of myself that you can see my arms in and know what year it was taken in from the tattoos. I also haven’t been able to stop thinking about getting a new tattoo; I mean this is a HUGE life change. #parentsdivorce

• I wasn’t going to mention this but I will because not only do I enjoy laughing at myself sometimes annoying my own self can have the same affect. So like, more than two point five years ago when I joined Twitter I had it running through my Facebook as my status updates right like that is nothing new people do it, but I stopped because I go through phases like NOW (give me a break please my parents are GETTING A  D.I.V.O.R.C.E, Tammy Wynette style, #parentsdivorce) where I talk a lot and didn’t want to annoy people, but now that Facebook is trying to become Twitter, I do now again have my status updates running through there because that is what they want right? They want Twitter; I’ll give em Twitter alright. Currently listening to Neko Case.

• All I will say right now is that it is really ODD to be almost 32 years old [LESS than three months away] and have parents married more than 39 years going their separate ways #parentsdivorce. We have all gone to our corners, I haven’t heard from my mom since she left for YYZ and I haven’t heard from my dad in a few weeks now.  I’m still set on marinate, information overload, over stimulation, snap dragon mode.

• Adam’s photos for what was on Twitter referred to as #mission #PRJ until he was on the way back and I let it be known that #PRJ meant #pacificrimjob can be found on his flickr. It is basically Bali from a Taxi with cool shots of kitties.